Guys Lit Wire

Await Your Reply

2012-03-06T05:49:00.002-08:00

Ryan's hand has been severed. His father is driving him to the hospital, or so he says, the hand on ice between. This is the opening image of Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply and it's only one of the many chilling horrors you'll find in its pages.

The book is made up of three parallel story lines. In one, Ryan has left his adopted family and a failing college career, unintentionally faking his own death in the process, to take up residence with his biological father, a small time con man. In another, nineteen year-old Lucy, flees her small-minded Ohio town with her former high school history teacher, George Orson, who promises to make them both rich through some nefarious dealing. In the third, Miles takes a leave of absence from his job with a Cleveland-based magician's supply company to go chase down his identical twin brother Hayden in Canada. The conspiracy-obsessed Hayden, the only family Miles has left, has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and escaped, years ago, from the institution which was treating him.

At first, it's difficult to see how the plots of these stories connect, or how they will converge as the novel unfolds, but certain parallels become immediately clear. All three stories are about orphans of a sort. And in all three, there is some question about identity. The cons that Ryan and his father Jay are involved in require them each to take on multiple Internet identities which they then use to open bank accounts and credit cards. Lucy finds George Orson's past increasingly murky. Hayden lives not only with frightening past lives that he glimpses in nightmares, but has created complete fantastical realities into which he drags both himself and his brother Miles. On top of this, both Ryan and Miles have a kind of genetic identity crisis to deal with. Ryan's discovery that he was adopted leaves him wondering what his life might have been like had he been raised by his biological father; Miles, who is identical to Hayden genetically, is left wondering why it is his brother and not he who lost his mind.

These protagonists are painfully lost and lonely, both psychologically and physically. They all embark on road trips through isolated landscapes: the northern frozen tundra, a hotel in an abandoned tourist town, a survivalist cabin deep in the Michigan woods. They are road trips which may lead, ultimately, to nowhere.

If it sounds depressing, well, it is. Await Your Reply is not an uplifting book. Avoid if that's what you're looking for. As the opening severed-hand image sets up, this book is instead a kind of horror novel, although there is really nothing supernatural in it. As in the best horror novels, these characters are easy to relate to and feel for. As in the best horror novels, you'll find yourself shouting at them to wake up, to see how they are being used and fooled, to recognize the danger they've put themselves in. Most frighteningly, these characters live in our world, a world in which identity is increasingly elastic, in which it becomes ever easier to make up a version of yourself or create a new persona to make your own. It has become easier to be fooled by people who, for one reason or another, have decided to misrepresent. While there is freedom in this new world ("You can be whoever you want to be," Chaon's characters declare over and over) there is also lots and lots of danger. Not only might we trust the wrong people, we might also find it difficult to remember exactly who we are.

Dan Chaon, who has a new book of short stories, Stay Awake, will be speaking and reading at my local library later this week. I'll post a little write up about that event in the comments below, if you're interested.

The Returning by Christine Hinwood

2012-03-05T10:00:00.000-08:00

As a longtime reader of fantasy novels (and even as a shorttime reader, in my younger days) there comes a point where the generic conception of fantasy simply doesn't cut it all the time. Kingdoms warring with Earth-Shattering Consequences™, plucky young protagonists who have destinies to save the world, and full of grand-scope epic detail, the kind of fantasy Diana Wynne Jones aptly and lovingly skewered in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland—it can get tiring after a while.

Fortunately, not all fantasy deals with matters of global import; quite a few are decidedly provincial, and Christine Hinwood's The Returning is among them.It's not even ultimately a novel about war and conflict (something that even other smaller-scale fantasies miss)—the story does start a short time after Cam Attling returns from the war as the only survivor of his small village, but it's not about the war. It is instead about the aftermath, about growing older and changing, getting lost and finding yourself in unexpected places; that it happened after a devastating war is almost unimportant.

Keeping in tone with the small scale, the war in question was simply one fought between feudal lords over a land dispute. Cam is the only soldier from his homeland to survive the war, and then only because of the mercy of the victor; missing both an arm and a sense of self, he doesn't slide easily back into the routines of rural life. His family and friends are simultaneously worried and frustrated by his actions; in fact, for the first half of the novel, we only ever see Cam as a secondary figure in the stories of others.

It's this little touch—that we never see events from Cam's perspective until over halfway through the novel—that makes The Returning stand out. Were the whole novel from Cam's perspective, it might have come off as a bit solipsistic, a sort of fantasy angst novel. Instead, we see Cam's struggles primarily through the eyes of others, placing another perspective on his actions. It's such an effective device that it's almost a disappointment to come across the chapters where Cam is the central figure.

The only real problem with the multitude of perspectives offered here is that it's easy to get lost in the transitions, and the novel's short length means that most characters have a limited space to establish themselves. This space is used well—many of the central figures, especially Cam, his sister Pin, ex-fiance Graceful, and Lord Gyaar, are fleshed out well—but it means that there's a lot of blank-filling that the reader needs to provide.

Both the provincial scope and the wide array of characters provide the grist of The Returning: this is a novel about whole towns and families changing as the result of a major upheaval, not simply one or two people. There's enough variety in all the different characters—even some of the more minor ones—that it's hard to see readers not clicking with one of them. It may not have the immediate, visceral appeal that more conventional fantasy novels might have, especially with its low-key tone and complete lack of melodrama, but it's definitely a solid novel and holds up well as a Printz honor.

Teen Survey: Anders, Again

2012-02-29T06:17:00.002-08:00

In 2010, I asked Anders, a then-sophomore, to fill out my GuysLitWire survey. Now that he's a senior, I thought we'd see how his book (and music, and film) tastes have changed and expanded over the years. Here now is Anders in 2012:

Name: Anders

Age: 17

Books recently read for fun: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; The Hunger Games; Catching Fire; Mockingjay; Expensive People; By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept; Veronika Decides to Die

Books recently read for school: Pride and Prejudice; Hamlet; The Iliad.

Books in your to-read pile: The Girl Who Played With Fire; The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest; The Help; A Gate at the Stairs.

Favorite Authors: I still don't have any 'favorite' authors. There aren't any that I am madly in love with, and whose works I enjoy without exception.

Favorite books: Leaves of Grass, The Alchemist, Brave New World, The Hobbit, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Why do you like to read?: Reading provides an escape. I don't feel anything that doesn't have to do with the story. I never stray from the plot line in my needs and emotions. It is all-encapsulating. A great book will make the sky dark and my eyes weary. It will release me with one final period as if I suddenly woke from an amazing dream.

Favorite movies: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close; Inception; Ratatouille; Wall-E; Up

Favorite musicians/singers/types of music: Yellow Ostrich; Freelance Whales; Foster the People; The Hush Sound; The Script; Local Natives; Avi Buffalo; Young the Giant; Fleet Foxes; The Morning Benders.

Do you listen to music (or TV) while you read?: No, it detracts from the reading experience.

Do you finish every book you start?: Almost always. If it's a recommendation, I might try the first few pages and if I don't like the writing style then I will stop.

Other notes: I got a Kindle Touch and I don't miss feeling paper under my hands when I read. I recommend them.

Bootleg by Karen Blumethal

2012-02-27T14:56:00.001-08:00

Unforeseen consequences.

I'm sure most, if not all, of us have done something with good intentions, only to see things turn out...not how we expected.

Supporters of prohibition hoped that outlawing "the manufacture, sale, and transportation of liquor" would "forever end drunkenness, reduce crime, and make life better for American families." (p. 3)

That's not what happened after the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect. There were some positive outcomes; fewer people were arrested for drunkenness or died of alcohol-related diseases. But millions more willfully broke the law, smuggling alcohol into the United States or brewing it themselves. Policemen and politicians accepted bribes while gangsters fought for bigger shares of the suddenly-illegal alcohol distribution trade.

In Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition, Karen Blumenthal delves into the history of Prohibition, its causes, and its effects. This makes the book's title somewhat misleading, since the scope of Blumenthal's narrative is broader than just bootlegging and gangs. So don't be surprised when the book begins with an account of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, but doesn't return to the incident for another eight chapters.

Blumenthal instead explains why Prohibition became law by first discussing the history of alcohol production and consumption in America (did you know that Americans drank more alcohol, per person, in the early 19th century than at any other time in the country's history?), the temperance movement (which initially advocated only drinking in moderation), and the lobbying and political machinations that led to the adoption of the Eighteenth Amendment. Only then does she go into detail about the smuggling, gangs, (lack of) law enforcement, and so on. Blumenthal covers a lot of ground, considering the relatively short length of the book. Bluementhal's writing is accessible, and the narrative organized mostly in chronological order, which helps all the names and information straight. Most of all, Blumenthal excels at providing context, such as the influence on World War I on the prohibition campaign, giving readers a deeper understanding of the topic. Along the way, Blumenthal also reveals the origins of the words teetotalers and speakeasies, that Al Capone's brother once worked as a federal agent, how some children and teenagers broke the law themselves while Prohibition was in effect, and much more.

The book's design is simple but effective, featuring numerous black and white photographs and illustrations. I do wish a timeline was included with the backmatter, which is otherwise extensive and includes a glossary, bibliography and source notes, and an index.

Book source: public library.

Cross-posted at The YA YA YAs.

The Left Bank Gang by Jason

2012-02-24T02:45:00.001-08:00

The Left Bank Gang opens with a dog shuffling down the streets of 1920's Paris, keeping mostly to himself. He ignores a panhandler, but then sees another dog that he recognizes. They shake hands. One dog's name is Ezra Pound. The other's is Ernest Hemingway.

Gang is a clever nugget of alternate history fiction. Rather than focusing on complex geopolitical questions like "What if the Germans won World War II?" Norwegian cartoonist Jason turns to the zeitgeist of expatriate writers such as Pound, Fitzgerald, Joyce, and Hemingway. His hypothesis is "What if all of these starving geniuses just got fed up and turned to crime?"

Each literary celebrity is drawn as an anthropomorphic animal. That stylistic choice is a staple of most of Jason's work, and adds to the accessibility of his comics. Most are dogs, though James Joyce is a bespectacled bird.

The scheme is appropriately Ernest's. You don't run with the bulls of Pamplona without having keeping a few other crazy ideas stored away. F. Scott Fitzgerald is happy to tag along. His wife Zelda is dissatisfied with Paris and the homesickness is starting to spread to him.

The book splits into two halves, the first half deals with everyone's waning patience for the literary lifestyle. The latter half focuses on the job. Plans are made and each member is given a different task. Unfortunately, our heroes were simply not cut out for the criminal life. The heist quickly unravels, forcing the group to split up. Death and disaster ensues.

Jason's storytelling in this half of the book is tight and suspenseful. The best comparisons I can make are cinematic: Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. Both of those excellent films dive headfirst into a botched heist, occasionally dropping clues that will give the audience a clearer picture of just what went wrong. The Left Bank Gang allows the reader to carefully and rewardingly put the pieces together in the same manner.

Jason's writing is hilariously blunt. Famous figures are introduced with a casual "Hey look. It's James Joyce." The lack of subtlety is charming and makes for a breezy 48 pages of reading. There are other enchanting details. In Jason's world, comics are the literary medium. I enjoyed Hemingway's complaint that all of Tolstoy's characters look the same to him. Gertrude Stein makes a cameo as Hemingway's mentor and all-around grouch, spewing rules that Jason himself doesn't even follow.

Neither Stein nor Zelda portrayed very positively, though I imagine they struggled with similar obstacles in real life. The book is very much a boy's club. Though the artwork is both funny and appealing, Jason also manages to find room for underlying tragedy in this and most of his other books. Substance definitely accompanies the style, and comic books have never seemed so sophisticated.

Wandering Son by Shimura Takako (translated by Matt Thorn)

2012-02-22T16:30:00.000-08:00

Starting middle school is difficult for any kid, but for fifth graders Shuichi and Yoshino, it's made even more difficult by the secret they share. Shuichi is a boy who wants to be a girl and Yoshino is a girl who wants to be a boy. Shimura Takako has created a manga that tells, in simply beautiful graphics a story that is anything but simple. In volume one of the series, we follow Shuichi and Yoshino as they begin to share their secret, first with each other and then with a classmate. In volume two, we follow the kids up to sixth grade. Shuichi's sister learns of his desires and Shuichi and Yoshino find a mentor in a transgender woman who takes the kids under her wing.

This basic plot description doesn't really do justice to this amazing series. To date, I have not come across any books that depict transgender youth so young, and I think this is one of the great strengths of the series because it allows the reader to focus more closely on the issue of gender identity as opposed to sexuality when so often these are mixed together. And of course, gender identity and sexuality inform and influence each other, but it's worth noting that they are not the same thing (at least, not from a queer theory critical view, something I've been studying here in graduate school land).

The stories are sparse. This isn't an action-packed manga, but I find the simplicity all the more powerful as it allows me to really contemplate the characters' lives. And even though the kids are struggling with their gender identity, this isn't an angsty drama. Well, it's not too angsty.

It's worth noting that this manga was written for an adult audience, and as an adult, it seems like this is what my story would be if I were asked to write a memoir of my middle school days. I could pick out one or two threads, and probably the trauma of puberty would loom large in the story. But don't let this scare you away from the story, and don't let it's apparent simplicity fool you. As you can see, I'm somewhat at a loss for words because these stories aren't chock-a-block action and drama. It's really difficult to talk about a quiet story, especially one with as much food for thought as Wandering Son.

So far, only volumes one and two of the story have been published in English. Volume three is due out in May this year. If you get these books, I suggest you take a look at translator Matt Thorn's essays at the back of each book. In volume one, he writes a brief essay about Japanese honorifics and personal pronouns. I had no idea of the many nuances in speaking to and about people, so different from the basic dichotomous system in English. In volume two, he includes a brief essay on what it means to be transgender in modern Japan. They provide a helpful context for the stories without being overly academic (which I also appreciated here in grad land).

Put Down Your Books

2012-02-21T09:06:00.000-08:00

Let's try an exercise. Put down your books just for a second. Just set them down there next to you. They're not going anywhere. They'll be there when you get back. You don't even have to stop reading to participate here. Ok? Breathe.

Now sit down at your computer and get on line. Oh, wait, you're already there . So you're familiar already with reading online since you are, uh, doing it right now. Ok, good. I'm going to suggest that you do a little more online reading. Because there's some good stuff--really good stuff--you may be missing. It's the stuff collected by the news aggregator sites longform.org and longreads.com.

Some time ago I remember reading commentators who griped about the prospects of online reading. The computer, they said, was fine for blogs and tweets and facebook updates, but no one was ever going to sit at a screen and read anything longer than a few hundred words, and nothing that had been written more than a few hours before. You just couldn't have anything of depth on a computer screen. Plus, computers just play into our really short attention spans.

These people were wrong. (They're the kind of people who are often wrong, but keep saying stuff anyway.) Even as Twitter grows ever more popular, so does long form journalism on the web, and from long form.org and longreads.com, you get the best of it. The editors of both sites hit home runs day after day, week after week finding fascinating online articles from old print journalism stand-bys like The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and GQ and irreverent websites like Deadspin. Sometimes the two sites overlap, but not as often as you might think.

A couple of recent favorites, especially relevent, I think, to guys:

Let the Robot Drive - self-driving cars being developed by Google and others - from Wired
The Making of 'Homer at the Bat' - one of the most influential episodes of the Simpsons ever made - from Deadspin
Where's Earl - the sudden rise of the hip-hop group Odd Future - from The New Yorker

Oh, and you don't have to read these things on a computer screen either. Longform.org has an iPad app, and links to send articles to Kindle. If you have some other eReader, it's not too hard to use the RSS reader in a program like Calibre to get the articles on there, either (a pox on the all the eReader houses for not building RSS capabilities into their devices).

When you've had your fill of fantastic online articles, you may resume your book reading.

Three and Out by John Bacon

2012-02-20T00:51:00.000-08:00

What is it like to be a college football player? Or how about being hired to coach in one of the most pressure filled programs in the country? Enter John U. Bacon's Three and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of College Football.

Bacon, a reporter based in Ann Arbor where the University of Michigan resides, was given incredible access for the whole three year reign of head coach Rich Rodriguez. Rich Rod, as he is known, became the Wolverines head coach in 2008 leaving the West Virginia team that he had built into a top tier program. The hiring was incredibly controversial, especially because Rich Rod didn't have any ties to U of M at all.

Instead of recounting more of the story, as fascinating as it is, I'll highlight a couple things that I learned about college football. According to Bacon, the relationship between university presidents and the football coach can be incredibly strained. Universities need football programs for the great amounts of money they generate, but head coaches can become legends and bigger than the university itself. This power makes many university presidents nervous and is why Rodriguez's tenure at WVU became strained and he even considered taking the job at Michigan.

Another interesting part of this story is the rise of U of M quarterback Denard Robinson. Being a student athlete is a rewarding yet tough situation that involves hours and hours of practice and travel along with the already busy schedule of being a student. While many are at the school on scholarship the players can't be paid in any way. So as Robinson became one of the nation's most exciting players, the school, the NCAA, the Big Ten and many others make millions of dollars on jerseys, tickets, products, advertising and more. Robinson, meanwhile, receives nothing and is put in the sometimes uncomfortable position of being the most famous person on campus.

There are many other things that Bacon brings to light including the politics of being a coach, recruiting high school athletes and the strange, illogical rules of the NCAA. Three and Out is a great way to learn more about a lot of the inner workings of college football. There are a couple of flaws to the book, the most obvious being a possible bias since Bacon seems to really love the university and became quite fond of Coach Rodriguez. Still, he really delves into what goes into running a football program and the pressure of living up to a storied history like the Wolverines have.

This is up there with my two favorite football books that I would also recommend. Friday Night Lights by Buzz Bissinger chronicles a Texas high school team (and spawned a great movie and television series) and John Feinstein was allowed to follow the Baltimore Ravens for a year in a book called, Next Man Up: A Year Behind The Lines in Today's NFL. For more info on college football, student athletes and some of these debates, The Atlantic did a great article called The Shame of College Sports.

Shadow Ops: Control Point by Myke Cole

2012-02-17T02:04:00.000-08:00

This isn't Harry Potter magic, my dear muggle. It's fast-paced military action complete with helicopters, armored vehicles, guns, soldiers, and, oh yeah: sorcerers flying around with flames shooting from their hands and creating armies of flaming elementals and dead goblins to help fight their battles.

Shadow Ops: Control Point, by Myke Cole, starts right in the thick of the action, as an American military SOC Team attempts to take down two magic users at a school who have just discovered their magical abilities - or "gone latent" as the lingo of the book presents it. These magic users are "selfers" - they're using their magical abilities for themselves and not for their country. The problem for Oscar Britton, a pilot on the mission, is that the two selfers are high school kids and if they don't surrender they'll be killed.

The Supernatural Operations Corp, SOC for short, consists of sorcerers working for the military: pyromancers, necromancers, aeromancers, etc. They've all gone through special training to control their magical abilities and to also focus their magic to suppress other magic users, allowing them to be easily captured. Throughout America, and the world, Selfers are gathering in rebellion against established laws controlling the use of magic for official use only.

After the mission ends, Oscar discovers his own magic powers and instead of reporting himself, runs, knowing that he'll be killed on sight if he's found. However, he's quickly captured and sent to a special training camp for civilian and military magic users on contract to the government where he has to decide to run again or become part of a team using their magic abilities for the country.

Shadow Ops presents a near-future America, and world, where magic has suddenly appeared and no one really knows what to do about. The politicians enact laws for things they don't understand and the military conducts operations against citizens on American soil. It's kinda scary presenting a world like that. The politics don't play a major role though. That's more of a background motivation for the on-going story.

As I read this book, I sympathized with Oscar's internal ethical conflict: should he use his new powers against civilians and others because they represent a clear and present danger to the rest of the country? Or should he run, using his powers for good as he sees fit, and not let others control his power. It all harkens back to Stan Lee and Spiderman, "With great power comes great responsibility." Not only does Oscar Britton have to decide what to do, but he's surrounded by people he's beginning to care for, and others he wants to help - his decisions will have ramifications for those people as well.

The magic in Shadow Ops covered all the bases: shooting lightning bolts or flames, healing, necromancy, and more. There was no wand-waving or spell shouting. The description of the action, magic and traditional, was exciting and worked well. It didn't occur to me while I was reading it, which is a good thing, but looking back the magic system seems lifted right out of a role playing game. It worked very well within the structure of the story though, and didn't seem at all like I was reading game-play.

There's just something fun reading about a covert military team shooting bullets from a gun with one hand and shooting lightning from the other hand.

Shadow Ops: Control Point, by Myke Cole, is the first in a series and was provided to me by the publisher for review.

Breathing Underwater by Alex Flinn

2012-02-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

When I recently shifted around a bunch of books on my bookshelf, I foolishly attempted to alphabetize my books. I completely failed at it, but I rediscovered a great book in the process. I was shelving some freebies that I am hanging onto because, even though they don't interest me, I've heard good things about them so...

Anyway, I'm shelving Beastly, that book by Alex Flinn that was made into a movie, when I come across an old favorite of mine by an author also named Alex Flinn. Here's the kind of idiot I am: it doesn't occur to me that these are the same author. Instead, I end up asking, "wow, what a great book this was..." And that was the end of my alphabetizing - the afternoon was stolen by Breathing Underwater.

Here's where I went wrong, Alex Flinn-wise. Despite my knowing, and having known, many female Alexes, I had assumed that Breathing Underwater was written by a man, and that Beastly was written by a woman. The latter because of packaging, but the former, well, it's because the main character, Nick, is written so convincingly, so honestly, and so brutally exposed, I thought only a male author would write a guy like that. Not that women can't write male characters realistically, but, when it comes to a character like Nick, why would they want to?

See, Nick's a jerk. More than that, he's the bad guy in every John Hughes teen film ever; every rich, athletic, control-freak, fist-first asshole to ever grace screens large or small, the kind that either ends up the foil to a nerd/nice guy triumph or ends up with the girl because he never was really that bad to begin with.

Make no mistake, though, Nick's a jerk. He doesn't realize it, though, and you sympathize with him, and hope he comes around, even hope he gets the girl. Until you realize he's more than a jerk, he dangerous-- to himself, to others-- and, if he can't get his act together, if he can't figure this thing out, then he's doomed to more than the foibles of the above-mentioned cliche's: he's headed for a life of bitter disappointment, violent dead-ends, and even jail.

Breathing Underwater is only 10 years old, but it's a bit out-of-fashion these days: a little more "social issues" and a little less "urban fantasy;" there are no glittering vampires here. And thank you, Alex Flinn and the lost HarperTempest imprint, for that. This kind of bracing reality gets past all the nicely metaphorized "bad-boys" of current teen fantasy trends and confronts the real deal of teen anger, that simmering, seething thing that gnaws and rages in your belly (or at least, it did in me) from about ages 13 to 18.

Which is not to say there's no good teen fantasy out there. I've got an unread book on my shelf by an author I really like-- she wrote Breathing Underwater, so I'm sure it'll be good.

Books Love You

2012-02-15T08:00:00.001-08:00

Reading the right book at the right time can change somebody's life.

The internet plays host to a wonderful, mad tangle of conversations about books. People talk endlessly about what books are popular, what books should be more popular, paper books vs. ebooks, and on and on. But something tends to get lost in the mix: why are books so important in the first place? How do they make a difference in our lives? Exactly what is the magic of words on a page that can alter our perspective, give us the courage to try something new, or just get us through a rough patch?

To explore how books make our lives better--and make us better at life--I’ve started a new website, Books Love You, where people can share stories about books that changed them. The site is tiny right now, but I do have a few stories up (including one by Guy Lit Wire's own Colleen Mondor.) Hopefully, as the collection of stories grows, people will be able to search for books by title, genre, even the different ways they've helped people such as heartbreak or illness.

But of course, a site like this thrives on reader participation. If you guys could help spread the word, I'd be incredibly grateful. And if a book (or poem or short story or graphic novel) has ever made a difference in your life, I'd love to hear about it.

“A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

2012-02-14T11:12:00.000-08:00

First, a few disclaimers. I've met John Green. I like John Green. I've been a Nerdfighter since ~~pretty much birth~~ the term first arose on the vlog John and his brother Hank started in 2007, before it went viral and they became internationally known YouTube superstars. So, well, y'know - don't expect a completely unbiased review from me, is what I'm saying.

Posting a review of this book on Valentine's Day seems particularly appropriate, since a large part of the book is about love. The undying sort of first love that is made more poignant by the fact that the main characters in this particular novel are teens with cancer - and we are told from the outset that the narrator is terminal; she might live a while longer, but she's not going to pull through. (And yes, a female narrator is something new for John Green, and he pulls it off spectacularly well, since he appears to grasp that girls are, at the core, just people, the same as boys are, in many respects.)

The Fault in Our Stars tells the story of terminally ill Hazel, who meets a hot boy named Augustus Waters at the Support Group her parents force her to attend. Hazel and Augustus hit it off, and romance follows, even though Hazel tries hard to fend it off, believing that it's better not to form attachments, since she knows she's going to die, and she knows that the people she leaves behind will be hurt when she does, and, well, she doesn't want to be responsible for hurting more people than is absolutely necessary (and even then, as is the case with her parents, she wishes those people didn't have to be hurt).

Hazel tells Augustus about her favorite (fictional) book, An Imperial Affliction by Peter Van Houten, a literary sort of book that accurately describes what it's like to be a teen dying of cancer, and which ends mid-sentence as the main character dies or loses the strength to continue. Both Hazel and Augustus end up loving the book, and chasing down the reclusive author to try to find answers to Hazel's questions about what happened to some of the other characters in the book. Hazel is especially concerned about the main character's mother, wanting a happy ending for that mother. Without it ever being stated, it's entirely clear that Hazel is particularly worried about what will become of her own mother once Hazel dies, since her mother's entire life pretty much revolves around caring for Hazel - it's her mother's full-time job, pretty much, and as an only child, Hazel worries that once she's gone, her mother will be left with nothing.

There is a lot going on in this book - a lot of themes, including the aforementioned ones involving family and romance as well as an examination of what it's like to be sick in today's society, and how ostracizing it can be. The Fault in Our Stars deals with issues of love and of loss in a wonderful way (affirming that it is indeed "better to have loved and lost/ than never to have loved at all" (Tennyson), even though that quote thankfully never appears inside its pages). Instead of a book about coming to terms with mortality - and, to be fair, there is a bit of that here, but in a "causing the reader to think about the big issues for themselves" way and not in a "spelled out for you because you're too dimwitted to get it otherwise" manner, Green has crafted a story of dealing with the issues that life gives you, full of love (parental, platonic, and romantic) and of philosophy and poetry.

The book includes quotations of poems, including "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot, "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" by Wallace Stevens and, if memory serves, a bit of Robert Frost and Walt Whitman somewhere, although I couldn't readily find it. Quotations from Shakespeare (the title is drawn from Cassius's quote in Act I, scene 2 of Julius Caesar: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,/ But in ourselves, that we are underlings") and from the fictitious novel by Van Houton, all of which tie into the plot and themes, sometimes in unexpectedly interrelated ways.

There are important conversations - conversations about what happens after death and whether there is such a thing as the immortality of the soul (that I totally remember having when I was a teen, if not in quite as articulate a way as Augustus and Hazel). Thoughts about Big Picture Things - the existence of God (or of some sort of knowing universe), what is it all about, why is there suffering, do you really need the bad things in order to appreciate the good, etc.

The writing is gorgeous - luminous. Numinous, even. The characters are human and real and have their faults and weaknesses as well as their strengths. They are angry and frightened as well as brave and noble. They are funny as well as tragic. And although there's a hopeful ending (yes, in a book that contains eulogies and in which you know for a fact that the main character is not long for this world, there's still a wonderfully hopeful ending), and although I already know that Tennyson was correct, the fact that the book hit me so very hard is a testament to the excellent writing and still more excellent ideas it contains.

Scored by Lauren McGlaughlin

2012-02-13T04:54:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, and you cannot concentrate. You know they will be posted today, and you know your entire future depends on them. The scores. Not scores from a test—scores from THE test. The one you are living. The one that measures, using ever present cameras and biometric feedback devices, you. Score in the 90s and see your college and career prospects crystallize before you. But let your score drop and see your future plans crack, because employers receive these scores, and the scores are science. No one questions them. Well, almost no one.

Some kids are unscored. Those at the bottom end, whose parents are too poor to pay Score Corporation for the service of being scored. And a few at the top end, whose parents are rich enough to not need a score. Like Diego, whose mother is a top lawyer and one of the few voices opposing the changes scoring is having on this post-Great Recession American economy. But what is Diego doing at the public school, mixing with the scored kids, the clamdiggers like Imani?

For Imani, her high score meant a way to pay for college, something her working-class family could not afford. Not anymore, not in this economic brave new world. But you have to be vigilant—any small thing could drop your score. Even associating with the wrong crowd, which by definition is anyone whose score is below yours. You are supposed to socialize only with your score group, those in the same percentile range. Even if one of those with a score below yours is your best friend.

A class assignment and a scholarship opportunity push Diego and Imani’s lives together, and they reconsider their attitudes toward the unscored and scored, respectively. And in Imani’s case, her attitude toward being scored at all.

Archimedes once said that if he could build a screw large enough, he could turn the world. In Lauren McLaughlin’s novel Scored,, Score Corporation feels that they have created an algorithm large enough to turn our world. To equalize society. To create a society where everyone truly does have an equal opportunity to succeed. All you have to do is score highly. No one knows exactly how the algorithm works, but everyone knows the five elements of fitness: peer group, impulse control, congruity, diligence, and rapport.

McLaughlin has given us a thoughtful, timely update on the dystopian genre. As “education reform” comes to involve more and more testing, and our surveillance society continues to grow, her grim panopticon seems more possible than not. A worthy take on the classic dilemma of freedom versus security, McLaughlin’s novel should grab guy readers despite the main character, Imani, being a girl. One almost senses that McLaughlin planned for this, as Imani loves to drive her boat recklessly and her female best friend is a top-notch gearhead. And a gripping later scene involves an amped-up scooter chase through sand dunes. The romantic tension between Diego and Imani is mostly subjugated to the action and philosophical discussions, which may dismay some, but as a guy reader, I was thankful.

I am not sure if reading this book will earn you AR points or increase your reading comprehension score, or if suggesting you read it will show that I as your teacher have added value to your education, but it will make you think about the role of the individual in society. And question whether people can and should be reduced to numbers.

Master Harold...and the Boys, by Athol Fugard

2012-02-10T11:00:00.000-08:00

The career of South African playwright Athol Fugard has been inextricably linked with the history of Apartheid. A vocal opponent of the system, he was subjected to government surveillance and suppression of his plays while writing for and organizing multiracial casts. Drawing inspiration from traditions spanning Brecht to vaudeville, his works focused on representing the effects of Apartheid on social and personal interrelations.

In his 1982 play Master Harold…and the Boys, Fugard plays out the effects of Apartheid on a personal level. Set in 1950, in a small tea room, Harold, called Hally, a teenaged white South African, waits out a rainy afternoon with his family’s two black servants, Willie and Sam. Waiting to hear from his mother, who has gone to see his father in the hospital, Hally’s conversations with the men range from school, to the ballroom dance, to reminiscence of his childhood with them. In their interaction, it becomes clear that Sam has filled a fatherly role for Hally, of which the boy’s own father’s drunkenness and instability deprived him.

Hally eventually learns that his mother will be bringing his father home, and with him the abuse and tumult that follows in his wake, and he lashes out at Sam. Directing his anger toward his father onto his father-substitute, the casual racism that has flitted through their earlier talks now turns to a demand, for the first time, for the deference he feels owed by the black man. No longer can they be Sam and Hally; he will be Master Harold, opening a void between them, across which Sam can only extend hope for change in the future.

In Hally’s sudden change of attitude, Fugard reveals a window into the forces that drive prejudice and cruelty. Unable to prevent his mother from acquiescing to his father’s return, Hally finds himself afraid and suddenly powerless. Recoiling from this sense of helplessness, he channels his pain onto others over whom he can regain a sense of relative power. A lifetime of shared care is thrown away, victim to his need to reassert control and security. This order’s success is illusory, Fugard observes, as Hally rejects the only source of real care he has known, the damage striking the oppressor and the oppressed in equal share.

And yet there is Sam’s hopeful note on which Fugard leaves us, the idea that one day better natures will prevail. To some degree, it is the kind of blind wish necessary for the oppressed to continue on under these conditions, but perhaps also, it is the author’s insight into his country. In 1982, when Master Harold…and the Boys premiered, it was banned in South Africa. In 2009, Apartheid officially ended fifteen years before, a movie adaptation was filmed there.

How to be a Human

2012-02-07T08:05:00.000-08:00

The humans aboard the Battlestar Galactica (from the newer series, not the original) have a problem. They're being hunted by robots, or, in the show's terminology, "cylons." Some of the cylons look like regular robots: they're made of shiny metal and their limbs are driven by pistons and they say things like "BY YOUR COMMAND" with obnoxious computerized voices. They're fast and powerful and hard to destroy, but at least their human victims know what they're up against. Some cylons, though, look and act just like humans. The human-looking cylons are far more dangerous as the Battlestar Galactica humans never really know if they're talking to one, or, for that matter, dating one.

Interestingly, one of the inventors of the real modern computer, Alan Turing, anticipated this problem way back when computers were room-sized collections of vacuum tubes that ate stacks of punch cards for breakfast. He recognized the potential power of computers and foresaw that one day they would become truly intelligent. Turing wondered how we would know when that happened. For him the simple answer was: a computer can be said to be intelligent when you can have a conversation with it and not know you're talking to a computer. This has become known as the Turing test. No computer or computer program has really passed it yet, but many are getting very close.

Each year in London a kind of Turing test contest is held. Computer programmers and engineers bring their machines, called "chatbots" to go up against flesh and blood humans, called "confederates." Each machine and human speaks to a judge via a chat program, and tries to convince the judge that he is talking to a human. The chatbot that fools the most judges wins The Most Human Computer Award, also known as the Loebner Prize. There is a secondary prize, however, that is given to the human confederate that accomplishes the same feat, convincing the most judges that he or she is, in fact, human. It's The Most Human Human Award.

Brian Christian, in his book The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us about What It Means to Be Alive, chronicles his quest to defend humanity by volunteering as a confederate and attempting to win this secondary prize. How, he asks himself, will be the best way to convince the judges that he is not a machine? He starts by rightly rejecting the initial advice he is given--"Just be yourself." (How could he not?) Instead, he looks at the history of Artificial Intelligence, of the Turing test and of human philosophy, searching for a strategy that will provide the judges with sufficient human credentials. He delves not only into computer programming history and practices, but into philosophical, anthropological and even anatomical questions. What really makes humans human? What really distinguishes us from animals or from machines?

The territory is fascinating and leads down multiple unexpected paths. For instance, not content with asking how machines can act more human, Christian, worried about his task, looks at how often humans act robotically, especially in conversation. Consider the following: "How are you?" "Fine, how about you?" "Crappy weather we're having." "Absolutely miserable." How often have you had similar conversations? How hard would these be to program into a computer? Christian explores how often corporations refuse to allow their employees to think for themselves--e.g., giving customer service reps scripts to follow--making the job of robot infiltration even easier. How much original, human thinking and speaking do we really do? Experiments on people who have had their right and left brains severed by surgery or accident suggest that a lot of what we do is happening automatically in our brains, behind the scenes, and we don't even know it.

All of this is heady stuff and Christian isn't shy about using big multi-syllabic words like "epistemological" to talk about it, but at the same time he never gets bogged down in jargon or distracted by abstract academic arguments. Everything returns to his single minded purpose: to prove, without question, that he is a pure flesh and blood human being. It turns out to be a pretty tough job.

You should be wanred that one possible side effect of reading this book is the persistent questioning your own behavior. You might start thinking--a lot--about when you're acting robotically, and how much of you actually is pre-programmed. It happens to the Battlestar Galactica humans too. Once they start worrying about who is a cylon, the inevitably turn the question on themselves: Am I a cylon? Am I just a machine, following my programming? How would I know the difference?

They're scary questions, but if we're going to survive the infiltration of computers into our daily lives, an infiltration that's already well under way, I might add, we better figure out how to answer them. Reading The Most Human Human would be a good start.

Pluto by Naoki Urasawa & Takashi Nagasaki

2012-02-06T08:00:00.000-08:00

If I had to guess who was the most well-known author of manga, I'd go with Osamu Tezuka, perhaps best known as the author of Astro Boy and effectively progenitor of the vast majority of manga available today. His popularity, prolific output, and long career is arguably a major contributor to the large and diverse manga market in Japan. So it's understandable that, for the "birthday" of Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atom) in 2003, Tezuka Productions would work with a contemporary well-known author—Naoki Urasawa—to produce a commemorative manga themed around Astro Boy.

This is where Pluto comes from: based on a short story by Tezuka, Urasawa and his editor Takashi Nagasaki take the concepts that Tezuka presented in Astro Boy and refashions them into a stand-alone but decidedly more Urasawa-esque narrative. This translates to a darker, more sophisticated take on a world with robots, and plenty of exploration into the concept of artificial intelligence, what it means to be "human-like", and the disastrous consequences that can follow as a result.

Pluto opens with the murder of Mont Blanc, one of the seven Greatest Robots in the World, by a mysterious assailant. One of the remaining Greatest Robots, Europol investigator Gesicht, is sent to investigate the case and quickly discovers that whoever killed Mont Blanc is also after the six remaining Greatest Robots and their inventors. This initially appears to be a revenge plot stemming from their involvement in the 39th Central Asian War, a catastrophic conflict that not-so-subtly resembles the Iraq War. The war ended in wholesale slaughter of vast numbers of robots and seems to have placed all robots on the verge of the next step in the evolution of artificial intelligence: the capacity to feel emotion.

It's very familiar ground for readers of classic science fiction—Tezuka drew heavily from Asimov's robot stories for the Astro Boy mythos, and Asimov's famous First Law of Robotics ("A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm") plays a major role in many developments for the story. It slides easily into the sorts of concept-heavy dialogues familiar to science fiction readers, making it an easy manga to suggest for SF readers reluctant to try manga. At the same time, the Urasawa/Nagasaki team has perfected the suspense narrative through Monster and 20th Century Boys, which keeps the series from getting overly burdened with exposition (the other aspect familiar to SF readers). Too, the characters have a greater visible emotional dimension—even, and perhaps especially, the robotic ones—which makes it an easy SF manga to suggest to those who wouldn't normally tread down the tachyon-particle-beam-paved path of SF.

Pluto ran in a manga serial aimed at an adult audience, so while it does tend to take a more mature approach to storytelling, it also doesn't have the same wistful air of lost youth that other Urasawa/Nagasaki works have, which keeps Pluto an earnest, straightfoward story as opposed to one reliant on nostalgia. In other words, a perfect Tezuka tribute, one that can be enjoyed by young and old alike, whether or not they've heard of Tezuka.

My Awesome/Awful Popularity Plan by Seth Rudetsky

2012-02-02T05:42:00.001-08:00

My Awesome/Awful Popularity Plan by Seth Rudetsky
"Justin has two goals for sophomore year: to date Chuck, the hottest boy in school, and to become the king of Cool U, the table in the cafeteria where the "in" crowd sits.

Unfortunately, he has the wrong look (short, plump, Brillo-pad curls), he has the wrong interests (Broadway, chorus violin), and he has the wrong friends (Spencer, into Eastern religions, and Mary Ann, who doesn't shave her armpits). And Chuck? Well, he's not gay; he's dating Becky, a girl in chorus with whom Justin is friendly.

But Justin is determined.

In detention one day (because he saw Chuck get it first), Justin comes up with a perfect plan: to allow Becky to continue dating Chuck, whom Becky's dad hates. They will pretend that Becky is dating Justin, whom Becky's dad loves. And when Becky and Justin go out on a fake date, Chuck will meet up with them for a real date with Becky. Chuck's bound to find Justin irresistable, right? What could go wrong?"- summary from Amazon

OK so I really need to read summaries before starting a book because I had no idea this was a gay novel until I started reading it. No joke, I re-read the first page just to be sure that it was a male narrator commenting on wanting a boyfriend. This of course made me really want to read the novel even more so than before.

Anyway, this is the kind of book I'd like to write- a hilarious, sarcastic, compelling book about a gay protagonist navigating through high school. I was so happy to see so much humor in the book (pretty much a laugh a page, if not more) because while I love all the gay teen books I've read, there aren't that many that are also hilarious.

I loved how Rudetsky wrote Justin and Spencer's friendship- it felt realistic, and it was nice to see two gay guys just being friends. Reading about their friendship and inside jokes and rituals was really fun and kept the pages turning. What also kept me compelled was the whole comedy of errors going on as Justin went through fake-dating Becky to try real-dating Chuck.

Overall, a fantastic YA debut and I really hope Rudetsky writes more!

The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips (and William Shakespeare)

2012-02-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

Here’s a secret that’s totally not a secret: I’m a Shakespeare dork. I suppose this makes sense, when you consider that my undergraduate degree is in drama. (Although I certainly knew classmates who didn’t like his work—even in the advanced Shakespeare class I took.) I also have a deep fondness (in fiction, at least), for what a friend of mine once described as “twee postmodern crap.” So it’s really not the least bit surprising that I would go for The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips.

I’ve been intending to get to Phillips’ work for quite some time now—I picked up his first three novels, Prague, The Egyptologist, and Angelica, long ago, but this one is the first one that I’ve read. The conceit of The Tragedy of Arthur (the book) is this: officially, it’s a rediscovered Shakespearean tragedy about King Arthur with an introduction by notable novelist Arthur Phillips. It is also, in the form of this introduction, the story of Arthur’s relationship with his father, a counterfeiter whom he believes forged The Tragedy of Arthur (the play). The introduction runs more than 250 pages, in which Arthur Phillips (the character), while fulfilling the terms of his contract with Random House to synopsize and annotate the play, gives the reader a history of his life with his father (brilliant, troubled, jealous of his ex-wife’s new husband) and his sister (brilliant, talented, obsessed with Shakespeare in a way that Arthur is not). It’s then followed by the play (itself about 100 pages long), with copious notes of the sort you’re likely to find in your average copy of King Lear or Much Ado About Nothing—explications of archaic vocabulary, occasional dramaturgical commentary—plus some notes by Phillips detailing the places where he believes his father’s game is given away.

“Game” is the operative word here—although I enjoyed reading The Tragedy of Arthur (the book) (the novel portion is an affecting if not extraordinary tale; the play, too, is solid-but-not-great in the way that, say Measure for Measure is solid-but-not-great), I get the distinct feeling that Arthur Phillips (the novelist) had a lot more fun writing it than I ultimately had reading it. I’ve done some dramatic writing in verse, and it’s challenging but super-satisfying (especially when you’re rhyming), and the added challenge of writing something that s convincingly Shakespearean makes for an awfully good excuse to spend a lot of time reading the canon. (Arthur Phillips (the character) makes a point of noting that many of the strange vocabulary and phrasings that he takes as signs of later forgery actually turn up in other places in Shakespeare’s work.)

Around the time the book was published, a number of theatres (including the Public Theater here in New York, home of the New York Shakespeare Festival) presented readings of The Tragedy of Arthur (the play), an I’m sorry to say that I didn’t get to any. I could imagine the play being fun to watch—more so than it is to read. Not that the novel and the play are bad—they’re not—but it’s drama after all, and drama is meant to be performed.

(As a side note, the indispensable music and books (and other interesting things) blog Largehearted Boy linked a day or two ago to an article at Intelligent Life on How to Write Like Shakespeare. It’s short, but will give you a good primer on some of the work that would go into the creation of a forged Shakespeare play.)

Song of the Red Cloak

2012-01-31T03:00:00.000-08:00

Song of the Red Cloak by Chantel Acevedo reads like one of those high budget movies where the guys wear little skirts and have impeccable abs. 300 has nothing on the world Acevedo created in her YA fantasy which is an ode to Spartan lore.

The book begins with two fathers testing their newborn Spartan sons by pouring wine over their faces to take away their air and test their mettle. Think of it as water boarding the ancient way. One baby cries while the other responds with silence.
Next we have a vision from a Sybil that predicts doom in a way only a Sybil can. A vague prophecy stating that if both the boys are allowed to live then Sparta will be doomed. A dog’s expert nose decides the fate of the newborn prince who must perish but while his father is holding him over the pit he was bade to toss him into he is overcome with grief. For the quiet child chose this moment to cry and a downtrodden father returns to his palace shamed because he did not do his duty and murder his son.
Fast forward a few years and we are at the Spartan Academy where both princes are in attendance. Here is where the story takes off at a breathtaking pace and the plot begins to weave through the prophecy with startling conclusions.

Acevado brought the world of the Spartans to my front door. I was enamored by the amount of research that had to go into the writing of this novel and impressed by how much culture I consumed while reading for entertainment.

Song of the Red Cloak has it all: Spartans, battles, vague prophecy and the added bonus of feeling true to the period. The relationships between the two princes, their friends and the slaves are noteworthy and meaningful. I think the book is a fabulous contribution to the YA historical genre. Do you like historical novels?

The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Volume 1

2012-01-30T07:00:00.000-08:00

In 2004, HITRECORD, an open collaborative production company, was launched. Owned by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the website allows people to post their music, art, words, and other creations, and encourages others to remix those creations into something new. One person's photograph inspires another person's poem. A filmmaker posts a short and asks around for a composer to provide score music for the film. It's an interactive, constantly-active website, and Gordon-Levitt himself posts frequently, using the handle regularJOE.

And yes, it is a company. When profits are made, the company and the contributing artists split profits 50/50. In September 2011, they released hitRECord RECollection: Volume 1, which contains a hardbound 64-page Book, a DVD, and a CD, and in December, they released The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Volume 1, which is the subject of this review.

When HITRECORD asked for contributions for The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, they received 8,569 submissions. 8,659. 60 were selected, edited, and reprinted. Each story is comprised of less than 50 words; each illustration is composed in black and white. The full list of creators and credits can be found at the end of the book, a table of contents that includes URLs so interested readers can look at the original submissions as they first appeared on the HITRECORD website, hitrecord.org

Many of these tiny stories inspire a giggle, or a moment's pause. My favorites include dancing with the dust on pages 13-14, the flickering stars on pages 32-33, the element of surprise on page 38, the other worlds on pages 62-63, and the pile of books on pages 68-69, the ghost of pages 72-73, and the encounter of Coincidence and Fate on pages 80-81. Each of these stories and accompanying images struck a chord with me, a loud, resonating chord. Kudos and congratulations to all of the contributors. I look forward to future volumes in the series.

What are your favorite pieces in this collection?
What do you think of flash fiction in general?
Leave your comments below!

Flip by Martyn Bedford

2012-01-27T03:00:00.000-08:00

When Alex wakes on a Saturday morning, everything seems different. His mom is calling for him to hurry, but she sounds odd. And why does he need to get ready for school when it's the weekend? The last thing he remembers from the night before is leaving his best friend's house and running through the street. Now Alex feels very unusual. His mom calls again.

"Philip! It's five to eight!"

Author Martyn Bedford poses an unusual question in his novel Flip: What would you do if you woke up as someone else? Despite the improbable chance of this ever happening, it is a query that I often asked myself when I was younger.

No doubt this was fueled even more by viewings of Being John Malkovich, in which people pay to enter the head of the enigmatic actor. But while that film played the scenario for dark comedy, Bedford manages to really ponder the realities of dealing with such a problem down to the last detail.

If you suddenly inhabited another person's body, would you try and pass as him and assume his identity? Perhaps you might run away and start a whole new life for yourself. I think, more often than not, a person would be truly incapable of escaping his previous life and settle into his old ways.

Alex, as Philip, is an athletic, popular ladies' man with a reputation for focusing on sports more than studies. It's a far cry from Alex's true identity as an asthmatic, chess-playing clarinetist. Philip, or Flip as everyone calls him, lives on the other side of England, far from Alex's former home in London. It's a new family, a new school--it's even a new year. Six months after the night he walked home.

How could this possibly happen? Alex has a few clues. Both he and the boy he's occupying have the same birthday and they were delivered in the same hospital.

When Alex discovers that his old body is in that hospital on life support, he realizes that there may be a possible chance to get back. But how can he escape when everyone around him is taking note of just how differently he's acting? He went out and bought a clarinet. Instead of listening to Flip's gangsta rap-filled iPod, Alex has gone out and (re)purchased some of his favorite albums by The Killers. He's even ditched the two beautiful girls who are fighting over him for a more intellectual girl who describes herself thus: "I'm so far off your radar I'm not even on the radar of the people on the outer reaches of your radar."

Flip is a satisfying mystery that delivers on its promising premise. It's also a distinctly British book, with lots of slang and references to towns that aren't familiar to readers here. Still, it manages to get the point across and speeds us to a chillingly climatic ending in the hospital room where Alex's body lies. What happens? You'll have to get in Flip's head to find out!

FEED by MT Anderson

2012-01-26T11:16:00.000-08:00

Have you been inside a Barnes and Noble lately? When I walk into my neighborhood Barnes and Noble their YA sections look like a New York Publisher’s marketing dream. An entire large section labeled “paranormal romance.” Really? Even more disheartening is this fact: ninety percent of the books on their shelves are written and marketed for girls. Honestly, in that sea of Sarah Dessens and Stephanie Meyers and Lauren Olivers it’s hard to find books for guys. Even sports books are hard to find, buried in rows of love and vampires. This is not to knock those books or authors. They’re popular for a reason. People like them and they’re reading, and that’s a good thing. And there's certainly nothing wrong with some love and romance. Working in education I see firsthand that boys are just not reading books like girls, and that because of how our schools teach reading (and what they make them read!), they are literally teaching boys to hate reading. Rather than solving the problem our schools are perpetuating it and bookstores have become their partners in crime. But hey, we know there are lots of good books for boys and we know boys will read them. How about putting some of them out? How about making some of them visible?

So, I thought for this month I would go back a few years to the better days when bookshelves actually had some variety and a boy could walk up and rather easily find a good book. The book today will be the masterful Feed by M.T. Anderson. This is a dystopian novel published before teens knew what “dystopia” meant. We’ll call that BHGE: Before Hunger Games Era.

Like all dystopian stories it is the future. People have brain implants to get all of their media directly into their heads. Who needs Tivo when you can get 700 channels fed directly to your brain? That’s the “Feed.” But people don’t just get TV; they get advertisements, news, and even the ability to talk to each other “mentally” through their feed. And like all media use – and incredibly prescient by Anderson given the scope and controversy today regarding the use and abuse of GPS tracking – everyone is tracked through their feed. It is Madison Avenue’s dream state; if you go to a lot of sports stores, let’s say, you get lots of commercials in your head for sporting goods, and so on. And the Feed of course, knows all about you. They have a personal profile, like a Government and Wall Street Facebook permanently linked to your brain.

Like all teenagers Titus has a Feed. He loves it and does not question it. The Feed is life and life is the Feed. But then he meets Violet who is an iconoclast; in fact, she begs people, including Titus, to “resist the Feed.” She’ll even do nasty things, like walk into stores she has no interest in just to screw with the Feed’s mass marketing program. How do you sell endless products to people who resist the Feed?

But Violet got her Feed a bit later in life, so it doesn’t quite work well, and slowly her health begins to deteriorate. She needs a new Feed. Her family doesn’t have the money to afford one, so they need FeedTech to give her free repairs. But they don’t want to give her a new Feed because Violet is a bad investment. She’s a lousy customer.

There are some remarkable yet subtle scenes of a very real potential future in Feed. When Titus and Violent walk through a pasture on a cattle farm, all of the cattle have been genetically engineered to remove all of their “unnecessary” parts. Without heads and legs, they are just slabs of meat with feeding tubes. Welcome to industrial farming 2.0. And there is this wonderfully evil touch: every time someone mentions school the word has the little TM next to it, meaning "school" has become trademarked, that is, a business. Welcome to schooling 2012.

Reading Feed is a frightening, haunting, exciting, thrilling, and an astonishingly imaginative experience. Like all dystopian fiction it is not about the future at all, but about our media-saturated lives and our consumerism run amok and our anti-thinking society. It is a deeply political book that will excite teens – boys and girls – and as they make their way through this terrific story, they will no doubt being doing something else: thinking.

Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

2012-01-25T09:06:00.000-08:00

This month, I turned to Mr. Internet for inspiration. While updating bibliographies at work, I came across this post on the Art of Manliness blog -- 100 Must Read Books: The Essential Man's Library. There are lots of pictures of mustachioed men splashed across the blog, and nothing says manly like a nice, waxed handlebar mustache, right? I knew I could trust the compilers of this list to lead me to some great books you guys might love. There are some great titles on the list, but the one that caught my eye was Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Saint-Exupéry might be best remembered as the author of Le Petit Prince, but he was also a pioneer of aviation and wrote a couple well-loved and well-regarded books about the early days of aviation. He disappeared somewhere over the Mediterranean in 1944 and is presumed to have died on that flight.

Night Flight is the story of three flights, from Patagonia, Paraguay and Chile, all headed to Buenos Aires to drop off mail for the overnight plane to Europe. The action of the story covers one night. Night flights were a new service because it was incredibly dangerous to fly at night, even in the best weather. And on the night this story takes place, a storm is coming. Not all of the flights are going to make it to Buenos Aires safely. Adventure, danger, tragedy -- Night Flight is the perfect story.
This book was quite the page turner. I had to read it in two sittings because I had to know who made it in alive. I kept picturing George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg, in costume from The Perfect Storm, as a couple of the pilots, even though they were far too old to play the roles. Something about the air of doom that surrounds their characters fits the book, though. And I'm really surprised this book hasn't been made into a movie yet. It's perfect for a summer blockbuster. I'm going to stick with Clooney and Wahlberg as pilots because I am out of touch with the newest crop of hunky twenty-somethings in Hollywood. Suggestions are welcome. I'm happy to peruse the entertainment magazines -- all in the name of research of course.

My grandfather was a pilot at the same time, so I grew up listening to stories of his exploits, but even still, I had no idea just how dangerous the early days of flight were and how physical flying a plane was. No digital co-pilots and black boxes. If you like this story, as I did, and want to learn more about the early days of flight, also as I do, I recommend checking out Saint-Exupéry's memoir Wind, Sand and Stars. I've started it a couple times but have gotten distracted with school work, but what I've read, I've loved.

cross posted at my reading blog: Library Lass (Adventures in Reading)

Awards, awards, and more awards

2012-01-23T16:15:00.000-08:00

The American Library Association's Youth Media Awards, honoring the best books for children and teens, were announced this morning. If you love youth literature and, okay, are a bit of a geek, it's always fun to watch the live webcast of the awards and hear the cheers as titles are announced. Or the quiet buzz as it's announced that the Schneider Family Award ("for books that embody an artistic expression of the disability experience") committee chose not to select a winner for the 0-8 years age range, and only two Newbery Honors were selected.

The full list of Youth Media Award winners can be found here. Some highlights:

Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley won the Printz Award for excellence in YA literature and the Morris Award for the best debut YA novel. Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey received a Printz Honor, along with Why We Broke Up, written by Daniel Handler, art by Maira Kalman; The Returning by Christine Hinwood; and The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

The YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction Award for teens went to The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism & Treachery by Steve Sheinkin.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline and The Lovers Dictionary by David Levithan were among the Alex Award winners, given to the best adult books with teen appeal, and have been reviewed here at Guys Lit Wire.

Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos won the Newbery Award, with Inside Out & Back Again by Thanhha Lai and Breaking Stalin’s Nose by Eugene Yelchin earning honors.

Brian Selznick's Wonderstruck received a Schneider family honor for middle school.

Some of the selected lists have already been announced, including the Rainbow List for GLBTQ books for children and teens.

Whew! I don't know about you, but my reading list just got a lot longer.

Mecha Corps by Brett Patton

2012-01-20T02:00:00.000-08:00

Darn good mech action! That pretty well sums up how I feel about Mecha Corps by Brett Patton. I read a Gundam series awhile back, and the Robotech novels, and Starship Troopers, and Armor: all those had powered armor or mecha of one or another. Other science fiction I've read has had powered armor. They've all been good, but Mecha Corps just freakin' kills it! This book, apparently the start of series called the Armor Wars, is what all mecha fiction should be like.

It starts out much like other military fiction: Matt Lowell is on his way to boot camp to start his life as a mech pilot. One of the other cadets on his team is quite the jerk, trying to prove he's better than everyone, and I was surprised by his fate. I figured this guy would either last longer to be an antagonist, or once he died, I expected him to come back as a ghost in the machine. Neither happened. It's sometimes nice when a book surprises you and doesn't give you everything you expect to happen.

At Mecha Training Camp, Matt learns of a new type of Mecha much more powerful than anything that has existed before. He also learns of the impending war with the leader of a group of genetically engineered humans thought eradicated in a previous war. Matt's past comes back to haunt him as his training is accelerated and his experience with the mecha grows - all leading to an exciting final battle with the new mecha in action.

One thing that I found different about the mecha here, is what I assume is the use of nanotechnology. It's never blatantly said that the mech armor is based on nanotech - it's called biotechnology, but the abilities of the powered armor to do very unique things seems to stem from a use of nanotechnology.

The blurb mentions that every time the pilots plug-in to their mecha, it messes with their mind. That plot point isn't front and center, but it does play a part - mostly for Matt who thrives on the addiction of piloting Mecha. Seasoned pilots warn the cadets about burning out and being relegated to a support role and no longer being able to pilot. Matt seems sees his options as live fast and and burnout all the way, or find a way to use the addiction to make him a better pilot.

Matt also meets a girl and falls for her, but he's more interested in piloting mech than building a relationship. Every hero needs a love interest, and every love story seems to need some angst to keep it interesting. While the human relationships within this story take a backseat to the awesome war machines, those relationships still drive the story. Matt's growing relationships with his teammates informs his decisions and his own growth, even though he puts himself and his piloting skills, his addiction to the machines, above those relationships.

This book seems to have it all: cool power armor with some wild abilities, warring space empires, huge space ships, space stations located in crazy locations, and an intriguing back-story that begs for more explanation in future books.

This is a series I'm thrilled to find and can't wait for the next one!

Mecha Corps, by Brett Patton, was provided to me by the publisher for review.

Cape Books: Thoughts on the Nature of Genre

2012-01-18T05:00:00.000-08:00

I read a lot of comic books. With some exceptions (Hellboy, Northlanders), most are superhero titles from the two major comics companies: Marvel and DC.

The superhero mold was stamped in 1938, with the first appearance of Superman. There have been highs and lows in popularity, but superheroes have largely dominated comics ever since. (As well as American culture in general. Superman alone has been featured in almost every medium popular in the last 75 years, from serial radio to over a dozen video games.) Despite this, or more likely because of it, people sometimes dismiss superhero titles as "cape books," or more commonly, "another f*cking cape book."

As comics struggle to find their footing in the new millennium, a lot of the blame for shrinking sales falls on the superhero books. Detractors see all superhero books as the same, churned out for fanboys already invested in the characters. The thinking goes that industry will never find new readers unless it expands into new genres. I'm all for trying new things, and again, I do read non-superhero comics (American Vampire, the recently completed Samurai's Blood), but I also believe that the reason the superhero genre has thrived for so long is because it's an incredibly flexible genre, able to be bent and stretched to suit almost any taste.

Not all genres are created the same. Some, like horror, focus on a single emotion. Others, like romance or mysteries, are hemmed in by conventions and audience expectations. But the superhero genre seems to contains an ever-expanding number of sub-genres. Just looking at stuff coming out currently, there's high adventure (Superman, The Amazing Spider-Man) and gritty crime stories (The Dark Knight, Punisher.) You've also got interpersonal drama (Fantastic Four, Birds of Prey) and epic story-telling (nearly every X-Man storyline since Days of Future Past). Then there's space opera (Green Lantern), teen angst (Ultimate Spiderman, Blue Beetle), comedy (Deadpool), and detective stories (Detective Comics, anything Ed Brubaker is writing). And around the edges, the superhero genre starts to crinkle up and examine its own assumptions (The Boys, Kick Ass 2, anything Warren Ellis is writing.)

This doesn't mean I love all "cape books" or agree with every decision the two major publishers have made in the past. I've written before about my disappointment in some of DC's most recent titles.* but I don't think the problem is that all superhero books are the same. Rather, I'm continuously amazed at how the superhero genre's ability to continuously evolve and reinvent itself over the past 75 years. And I think it will continue to grow--in one form or another--simply because it will never run out of stories worth telling.

*I still maintain that, if comics are going to survive, they've got to make a sustained effort to bring female readers back into the fold. However, my anger has subsided some since I wrote those two posts, mainly because DC is putting out some fantastic titles featuring women (Wonder Woman, Batwoman, and hopefully the upcoming World's Finest.)

Making Faces

2012-01-17T09:19:00.000-08:00

I'm not big into TV police procedurals like CSI. I find them a little cold as far as storytelling goes. But the science of forensics which these show's reference (though sometimes a little sloppily), I find completely fascinating.

The Girl with the Crooked Nose: A Tale of Murder, Obsession, and Forensic Artistry by Ted Botha, just released in trade paperback by Penguin, chronicles the work of Frank Bender, one of the world's most successful forensic artists.

Frank Bender's work goes well beyond that of a typical police sketch artist. Bender creates full, three-dimensional sculptures of his subjects, forming heads with faces in clay and plaster from forensic evidence. Most often he works with the skulls of victims to create a likeness for identification purposes. Sometimes he creates a bust of the living from scratch, based on pictures to show how a missing subject would have aged and changed over time. His work has led to countless identifications and the capture of nine fugitives.

The book bounces between two timelines, one showing Bender's development as a forensic artist and the other following him on his most difficult and dangerous case: a string of hundreds of murders of young women near Juarez, Mexico. Bender discovered forensics while working as an artist, attempting to learn sculpture and seeking free anatomy lessons from a friend who worked at the Philadelphia medical examiner's office. Bender volunteered to try to reconstruct a victim's face. After that, he was hooked. Over time he abandoned his successful photography business to study and practice forensic artistry.

Although Bender extensively studied the work of forensic artists who had proceeded him, Botha characterizes his approach as almost naïve, showing Bender working as much from gut and instinct as from an understanding of science and anatomy. What is most revealing in Botha's account is the detailed descriptions of Bender's processes, from identifying the specific tissue thicknesses on a typical skull to the details and facial expressions which make each subject a unique and recognizable individual. Botha describes Bender sometimes being influenced by the images of subjects that come to him in dreams. The details and techniques are as fascinating as Bender's results which through some combination of science, instinct and sheer luck, more often than not hit the mark exactly. An insert of photographs of many of Bender's busts shows a similarity to the ID'd subject that is jaw-dropping. Bender's talent, like that of many of the forensic specialists featured in the book, is more about understanding human character, what makes a particular person hopeful or sad or peppy or downtrodden, than understanding skeletal or muscular structures. His deep intuition is revealed in his work.

Bender's work on the Mexican murder victims forms the other half of the book. It's a story of police corruption and the tale fascinating, frightening and frustrating. And while the story itself ultimately doesn't lend itself to a fictional-style suspense story, Botha does his best to milk it for narrative tension.

Next to the work of Frank Bender himself, Botha's account reveals forensic police work to be a much more haphazard practice than what CSI would have us believe. For instance, when the investigators his a dead end, they often secretly visit psychics in hopes of gaining new insight. Their handling of physical evidence is hardly antiseptic. Bender is almost casually given skulls, skeletons and even bodies to work with, carrying them home in boxes or coolers strapped to his motorcycle or, on one occasion, in a bag carried aboard a bus. With labs overwhelmed, the artist is often tasked with removing the deteriorated--and smelly--flesh from the skulls. He does this by boiling the skulls in chemicals in his basement. On more than one occasion, the police simply forget that they've left human remains in Bender's possession, so he holds onto them for months or years.

Bender, fortunately for him if not for those around him, has a great sense of humor about the "heads" he works on and is not above playing practical jokes on his family, friends and visitors to his house. Nonetheless, Botha describes him as a consummate and hyper-dedicated professional and his obsession with solving crimes with art is nothing short of laudable.

Graphic Novels -- Sidekicks and Bad Island

2012-01-16T01:39:00.000-08:00

Sidekicks by Dan Santat and Bad Island by Doug TenNapel are two recent adventure graphic novels that are great for younger teens.

Sidekicks is the story of Captain Amazing’s pets. As the superhero gets older he decides to hold auditions to find a new sidekick. Of course his pets, Metal Mutt, Fluffy the hamster and the household's newest pet, a chameleon named Shifty all want the job and begin training at night. The dog fares well with his powers, but that is not the case for Fluffy and Shifty. Luckily they meet up with Static Cat who used to be one of Captain Amazing's pets when he left under strange circumstances. The pets' complex histories are revealed as they embark on some ridiculous training sessions like removing an elephant from a restaurant.

As the intrigue builds leading up to the Sidekick Auditions, a new superhero, Wonder Man, has been dispatching villains with ease around the city and will surely be the front runner for the job.

This is a funny graphic novel with a much deeper plot than one would expect. Personally I think seeing a hamster, with one humorous super power, wearing a costume is awesome and easily worth the effort in picking up this book.

Doug TenNapel has been reviewed on guyslitwire before with Ghostopolis and others. Bad Island continues TenNapel's ease with telling fantastic stories with a thoughtful human element. In Bad Island, we follow the son of a great leader and warrior who yearns to join his people in battle. His father, however, is convinced he is not ready and bars him from fighting. The son goes forward anyway, jumping into battle and getting in over his head resulting in his capture.

Meanwhile, a family is getting ready to go on vacation. Dad is forcing them to take a trip on a sailboat, but Reese does not want to go and his sister Janie is more concerned about her pet snake. When they encounter a storm and end up on a strange island, the family has to bond together to survive. When they start finding strange artifacts and getting chased by odd and frightening creatures, Reese must step up and prove that he is becoming an adult capable of leadership. It is fun to watch the family work through the strange puzzles and learn what the island really is.

Fans of the Amulet series by Kazu Kibuishi, Jeff Smith's Bone and anything by Doug TenNapel will enjoy these graphic novels.

Death and the Penguin

2012-01-13T05:30:00.000-08:00

A writer, organized crime, and a penguin: these are the wild mix from which Andrey Kurkov forms his bleakly comic novel Death and the Penguin (translation by George Bird).

In the post-Soviet Ukraine, Viktor, a writer who has found no success in novels or short stories, obtains a job preparing obituaries for a newspaper’s files. When the subjects of his pieces begin dying off in suspicious circumstances, Viktor finds himself the entangled pawn of a shady power struggle that spans the celebrities, the mob, and the government. Lost in a maze of unclear alliances and loyalties, he attempts to discover the part he must play.

Misha, a penguin Viktor adopted when the zoo could no longer afford its animals, provides his counterpoint, another lonely figure out of place and lost in unfamiliar territory, and elevates the novel above genre crime fare. The pet penguin confined to a small apartment is an absurd departure from the nebulously threatening world Viktor becomes a part of, but, it becomes clear, it is no stranger than this unpredictable web of friends and foes. The co-solitude of these two lost souls becomes a poignant image that grounds the novel as Viktor finds relief from his own displacement in a profound sense of duty toward his companion.

Pushcart Prize XXXV: Best of the Small Presses

2012-01-12T00:01:00.000-08:00

I'm always on the lookout for good nonfiction. Some of the best I find are in The Pushcart Prize. Editor Bill Henderson publishes it once a year, and includes short stories and poetry, as well.

My daughter gave me the 2011 edition in September, but immediately borrowed it. When I visited last week, I got to read a bunch of good stuff, but especially liked "Freaky Beasts: Revelations of a One-Time Bodybuilder." Here are some excerpts:

In the ... documentary Pumping Iron (1977), Arnold Schwarzenegger... likened a good workout pump to an orgasm... I cared more for what was permanent, for what I could carry through the day with me: the body armor that announced the arrival of a formidable opponent, a disciplined warrior... a man. Because, after all, being a man is the chief concern of any adoleswcent male, whether he recognizes it or not...

I needed another fifty pounds of lean mass, and it looked like anabolic drugs were the only route. If someone had told me then that in just over a year I would waltz across a stage in a frenzied bodybuilding competition, wearing only a blue bikini bottom, tanned an unnatural bronze, and mushroomed on three different anabolic drugs, I would have doubted it. My only focus at this juncture was to look like a genetically enhanced Atlas, to be the strongest eighteen-year-old guy in town.

... during my senior year of high school some pals and I were able to score - through vigilant negotiations with other bodybuilders... - a potent oral anabolic called Anadrol... Anadrol was the most sought after bodybuilding drug on the black market, a badass chemical invention that increased size and strength as nothing else could. Anadrol was so attractive, not only because of its supreme effectiveness, but because it wasn't an injectable steroid: many of my companions had a fear of needles... and weren't capable of plunging one into their buttocks.

The irony is that injectable steroids are much healthier because, unlike pills, they get directly assimilated by the body without having to pass through the liver. Anadrol, on the other hand, was so potent it unleashed hell upon the liver - sometimes I could feel mine aching. But the stuff was sweet magic: I inflated from 155 pounds to 165 pounds in just two weeks, and this for someone who could go months on end without gaining a single pound. Never mind the high blood pressure that caused me constant, beleaguering headaches... I could think nothing of the possibility that I had begun inflicting damage on my vital organs with black market chemicals.

Nearly everyone... noticed the added mass, the increased irritability and aggression, my complaints of headaches... One day in the hallway I literally ripped a door off its hinges when it wouldn't open properly, and for some reason this felt good to me...

(I was) beginning friendships with gargantuan freaks of nature, guys who were so consumed by drugs and the bodybuilding lifestyle that they could scarcely hold a two-minute conversation with anybody who wasn't.

I had begun accumulating boxes of steroids for my own use; the drugs would come into the gym from our key sources - two fellow freaks we trusted - and I bought up whatever I could, even if I wasn't just then using that particular blend of testosterone. Word of one's drug stash passed quickly... and when a fellow soldier needed an anabolic for his battle, you happily sold it to him. This hoarding and selling became rather chimerical once when a pal named Tom stopped by my place to pick up a thousand dollars worth of Dianabol, a magical anabolic difficult to come by. Tom was a gigantic cop, six feet seven inches tall and well over three hundred pounds, and he arrived at my apartment that day in his police cruiser and police uniform. So I sold a uniformed cop a bag of anabolic steroids in my sunlit kitchen. Through the window above the sink I watched him leave, and I remember saying aloud to myself, "What on earth am I doing?" But I didn't give it much thought after that moment, because this was the reality of the world we inhabited. None of us experienced even a second of shame over our drug use - shame was for everyday people, and we were champions who relished the secrecy and law breaking.

The 2012 Pushcart Prize has just been published. The excerpt above is from the 2011 edition. I wish I had all 36 volumes.

Heathers by John Ross Bowie

2012-01-11T08:03:00.000-08:00

The difference between a classic movie and a cult classic is a degree of slavish devotion. Classic movies, generally, are acknowledged by critics as great examples within the history of film, often elevating the medium to an art. Cult movies rarely aspire to the greatness or attention the receive and usually have a devoted following despite and not because of their critical attention. It falls to their fans – on blogs and message boards and at conventions and on Internet fan sites – to convince the rest of the world of their true worth.

Enter the Deep Focus series of film guides from Soft Skull Press.

Calling itself "A Novel Approach to Cinema" the series (six books so far) give authors permission to delve deep into their love of a specific film, elevating them from cult fanatics to cultural archaeologists. And while Jonathen Letham's interrogation of John Carpenter's They Live initially drew me to the series it's actor and author John Ross Bowie's take on Heathers that sold me. Somewhere between film criticism and fanboy obsession, this is where budding teen cineastes are going to find meaningful film theory. They'll also perhaps discover an otherwise overlooked cult classic like Heathers which, Bowie makes the case, is the ur-Mean Girls movie and an eerie foreshadowing of the Columbine massacre.
Unlike conventional film analysis Bowie's examination absorbs all the elements of popular culture available, as well as interviews with the film's writer and director, to explore not only what ended up on the screen but the journey it took getting there. Novice screenwriter Daniel Waters apparently envisioned a much deeper (and nearly 3 hour long) social satire that would have been the ultimate anti-John Hughes movie ever created, and he wanted no one by Stanley Kubrick to direct it. It clearly didn't work out the way Waters intended, but he was an active and adaptive participant along the way, making sure that his message about the cruelty of teen society wasn't lost or compromised. Not entirely at least, as Bowie reveals that the original ending was much, much darker and threatened to potentially sink everything else the film had been building up to.

Using the film as a sort of cultural mirror Bowie begins with a brief synopsis of the plot then moves on to chapters where he discusses the film in relation to bullies and their victims, the origin of adult-based teen dialog in movies, social satire, and a brief examination of Columbine. Throughout Bowie's examination bounces back and forth between then and now, checking the echo and resonance to make sure that what was true then was still true today, or more true as the case may be, justifying that the film truly is worth the time to think about at the textual level.

"We're not supposed to see ourselves in Heathers, just see heightened versions of our tendencies" Bowie summarizes toward the end. This could be seen as a neat oversimplification of all that has come before but I think it best explains what separates type from archetype and a classic from a cult classic; We don't identify, but we totally understand. Kind of a neat little pop culture lesson to learn from a book about a film released over twenty years ago.

Heathers
by John Ross Bowie
Deep Focus series editor Sean Howe
Soft Skull Press 2011

also mentioned:
They Live
by Johnathan Lethem
Soft Skull Press 2010

Filthy Shakespeare by Pauline Kiernan

2012-01-10T08:55:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder what the Bard was on about? I mean, really on about? If you've read Romeo and Juliet or Hamlet for English class (and if you haven't, you probably will), you've probably figured out that there are some double meanings in the text. And if you've ever been to a live production of one of his plays, the snickers from at least some of the members of the audience have probably cued you in to the fact that just because it's Shakespeare doesn't mean it's high-brow. In fact, Shakespeare's plays were well-loved by the (unwashed - literally) masses during his lifetime, and with good reason: even the tragedies have really bawdy bits in them.

Hence today's book: Filthy Shakespeare: Shakespeare's Most Outrageous Sexual Puns by Pauline Kiernan. The book has a somewhat titillating title, and it certainly is chockablock full of blunt - nay, crude - sexual terms. But it does a good - if overenthusiastic - job of identifying representative scenes in many of the plays that involve decidedly bawdy terms.

Shakespeare's bawdy scenes are often comical as well (or would have been played for comedy in Shakespeare's time, such as the scene recounting the death of Sir John Falstaff in Henry V - nowadays played for ill-judged pathos most of the time, but likely played for laughs among the bawdy Elizabethan crowds), but sometimes they are not - as in Henry V, where Henry threatens the Dauphin and the French using tennis terms after the Dauphin sends him a mocking gift of tennis balls, or in the scene outside Harfleur where he tells the Governor of Harfleur to let him in now while he has control of his men, or he'll let them loose to rape and pillage.

Pauline Kiernan is a scholar, and although she makes plain the meanings of many of the terms used in Shakespeare's plays, many of which have been forgotten over the centuries, there is little art in her translations - when she decides that a word of Shakespeare's dialogue stands in for something else - and she usually uses particularly blunt words for body parts and actions involving them - she swaps her body parts and whatnot for Shakespeare's text, ordinarily without any nuance or subtlety.

In the book, you learn things like that the word "O" is often used to reference the female anatomy. And then you get specific scenes spelled out for you, like this bit from Romeo and Juliet, Act II, sc. 1:

Mercutio If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark.
Now will he sit under a medlar tree
And wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
As maids call medlars when they laugh alone.
O Romeo, that she were, O that she were
An open-arse, and thou a popp'rin' pear.

From Filthy Shakespeare:
If love be blind, he won't be able to f*ck the vagina.
He'll sit under a medlar tree
and wish his mistress were that kind of fruit
that girls call open-arses when they're talking dirty on their own.
O Romeo, if only she were, O if only she were
an open arse, and you an erect penis popping it in her.

And seriously? This was one of the tamest translations in the book.

Filthy Shakespeare is a great resource for figuring out those naughty double meanings, which, in all honesty, makes it easier to appreciate Shakespeare in general, and his ability to work on multiple levels at once in particular. It's also useful for plays where you can't quite figure out why a particular scene is even there - those scenes that now feel like filler, but back then, with knowledge of the double meanings, would have had audiences rolling with laughter.

For instance, in the case of Falstaff's death, which is communicated in Henry V, I didn't see that the scene added anything to the action. If it doesn't add anything, then what's it there for. Sure, we knew Falstaff was involved with Prince Hal (now Henry V) during the Henry IV plays, so it makes sense to sew up that particular loose end. But really, that scene is kind of boring when staged as a serious one. I suspected that, like many of the scenes that now seem misplaced and/or tedious, it was supposed to be a comical scene. I suspected, also, that it had something to do with sex. In Filthy Shakespeare, I learned that I was correct about the sexual puns, and likely the comedy. If you were to read the book, you'd see what I mean - it's a bit too crude for me to reproduce here.

Now Kiernan, the author, definitely has serious credentials - she has a Ph.D. from Oxford, and she taught there for many years, and has written several books on Shakespeare. She's got serious bona fides, in other words. So in some ways, this is a scholarly work tarted up in profanity, a way of educating modern audiences into some of the nuances of Shakespeare's work, and on exactly how many different levels he was sometimes operating at the same time. It's a testament to his skill that the surface words he used continue to make sense and resonate even when secondary meanings are overlooked.

The Psychopath Test--Jon Ronson

2012-01-09T17:02:00.000-08:00

‘I heard a story about her once,’ said James. ‘She was interviewing a psychopath. She showed him a picture of a frightened face and asked him the emotion. He said he didn’t know what the emotion was but it was the face people pulled just before he killed them.’ (10)Reporters have to decide whether to be participant observers or detached observers. In other words, will they actively write themselves into their story, or take the stance of a neutral observer, the camera eye? Jon Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test (and previously The Men Who Stare At Goats, about the military’s fascination with the paranormal), brazenly inserts himself into his writings. This allows him to write sentences like the following: “I’d never really thought much about psychopaths before that moment, and I wondered if I should try to meet some” (10).

Some readers disdain this style of writing, finding it showy and selfish—just give us the facts. And when such writing is done poorly, I am in full agreement. But in the right hands (write hands?), I adore it. Ronson has the right hands, and also the right topics. His doubts about psychiatry and the diagnosis of psychopathy become our doubts. His style allows us as readers to feel like participants in the madness he investigates.

Ronson’s investigations take him inside Broadmoors, England’s highest security psychiatric hospital, where he meets “Tony,” who pretended to be a psychopath in order to avoid prison. Now the psychiatrists are convinced he is a psychopath. And to Queens, where he interviews Toto Constant, an exiled Haitian warlord whose men committed horrible crimes against humanity. Who may or may not be a psychopath, and may or may not have been working for the CIA. And to Wales, to talk to Bob Hare, creator of the Hare Checklist, the tool used to diagnose psychopaths. As well as to New Jersey, where Ronson talks to Robert Spitzer, who takes us behind the scenes in the creation of the DSM-III, where “practically every disorder you’ve ever heard of or have been diagnosed with came to be invented.” And to the shadowy world of David Shayler, former MI-5 spy who later became a 9/11 and 7/11 denier and a self-proclaimed Messiah.

Ronson is often glib, frequently self-deprecating, and always entertaining. This does not, however, mean that he does not raise serious questions. Indeed, all these investigations and interviews (and I have by no means mentioned them all) raise more questions than they answer about madness, psychiatry, and the “madness industry,” Ronson’s term for the pharmaceutical companies and all their tentacles. Ronson does not deny the effectiveness or necessity of psychiatric care and treatment in some circumstances (unlike the Scientologists, whose anti-psychiatry attitudes he discusses in his book). But he leaves us wondering about the health of the mental health field and our definitions of mentally ill:

“There is evidence that we’ve been placed on this planet to be especially happy or especially normal. And in fact our unhappiness and our strangeness, our anxieties and compulsions, those least fashionable aspects our personalities, are quite often what lead us to do rather interesting things” (271). So concludes Ronson in this book, which is itself a rather interesting thing.

The Edumacation of Jay Baker -- Jay Clark

2012-01-06T08:12:00.000-08:00

Jay Baker, high school freshman and Ohio native, is in love with his best friend, Cameo Appearance Parnell. (Rather from shrinking from her unusual name, she embraces it with every fiber of her cheerleader self.) Unfortunately, she's always dating some jock or another. As far as Jay's concerned, they're all pretty much interchangeable.

All except for his arch-enemy, Mike Hibbard. A long time ago, they used to be friends, but then Mike turned into a complete meathead jerk, and spends much of his free time at school harassing Jay.

Stuff on the homefront isn't so hot, either: Jay's mother is moving to the local trailer park for the next three months because she and his father have decided to take a trial separation from each other. And then Jay's sister informs him the separation probably has something to do with the fact that their mom has been boffing Some Dude Named Keith.

Along with the expected emotional distress, all of this drama is wreaking havoc on Jay's Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Jay's voice—internal and external—is funny, with the jokes and pop culture references coming a mile a minute. While some of the jokes fall flat, and the constant barrage gets grating, it also feels realistic—it's a part of him: he likes talking like a smart ass, but it's also a defense mechanism—and the author acknowledges the fact that it can be annoying, in that one of his teachers* tells Jay to knock it off on a regular basis.

The writing feels choppy in parts, and sometimes makes some odd, unexplained jumps—that might be explained away by me missing a pop culture reference or by a typo in the review copy, though—but the relationships between the characters (especially the relationship between Jay and his sister, which was just perfect) were really enjoyable, and felt right.

Fans of the Carter books, Stupid Fast, Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie, and books starring other funny male narrators should definitely give it a look.

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*Who is, herself, addicted to the CW and prone to verbal smart-assery.

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Cross-posted at Bookshelves of Doom.

Don't Let Me Go by J.H. Trumble

2012-01-05T07:19:00.000-08:00

Don't Let Me Go by J.H. Trumble
"Some people spend their whole lives looking for the right partner. Nate Schaper found his in high school. In the eight months since their cautious flirting became a real, heart-pounding, tell-the-parents relationship, Nate and Adam have been inseparable. Even when local kids take their homophobia to brutal levels, Nate is undaunted. He and Adam are rock solid. Two parts of a whole. Yin and yang.

But when Adam graduates and takes an off-Broadway job in New York--at Nate's insistence--that certainty begins to flicker. Nate's friends can't keep his insecurities at bay, especially when he catches Skyped glimpses of Adam's shirtless roommate. Nate starts a blog to vent his frustrations and becomes the center of a school controversy, drawing ire and support in equal amounts. But it's the attention of a new boy who is looking for more than guidance that forces him to confront who and what he really wants."- summary from Amazon

Trumble has written a really emotional, funny, realistic debut. It's one of the best books I've read all year, if not THE best. I was a bit wary in the beginning because I didn't like Nate at all. I thought he was being really pissy for no reason and had no idea what an amazing boyfriend he had. Seriously, I was REALLY frustrated so it took me a bit of time to get 100 pages in. But once I got there, and Nate's past got revealed as well as good times between Nate and Adam were shown, it came together. What Trumble did here is a huge accomplishment- she made a really realistic character who felt like a real person. Nate is an extremely flawed character and there will be times that you like him and times you don't, but in the end, you still root for him. For the whole book, I was like "JUST TALK THINGS OUT!!" and "WHY ARE YOU BEING SO STUPID?!" It doesn't happen often that I get that invested in characters and a story. I felt like I was reading about people I knew and they were telling me everything that was going on.

I loved the friendship between Nate and Danial (btw, not a fan of his name at all- I'm one of those people who reads the words in their head- like an internal audio book- so everytime I came to his name, I was like "It should be Daniel!"); it's how all relationships should be between gay and straight people, especially men. Sexuality shouldn't be an issue and your friends should be loyal and willing to stand up for you.

I really liked the way Trumble unfolded the story, telling it a bit out of order. It starts out in the present day with Nate driving Adam to the airport for his off-Broadway job and from there, it goes back to when they first met and started dating back to present day then back to a memory. It's like every other chapter was written about an event in the past. Trumble also does not shy away from sex and sex talk- there's nothing graphic but it's also not sanitized in any way. Adam and Nate have a true relationship. There's also a nice epilogue that takes place 10 years in the future, which I loved.

Overall, this is a book I could go on and on about. I loved it that much. It's a stellar debut and I absolutely cannot wait to see what Trumble has in store for us next!!

One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy by Stephen Tunney

2012-01-04T17:57:00.000-08:00

Hieronymus Rexaphin is a teenager like lots of other teenagers. He fights with his parents. He falls for girls way out of his league. He sneaks out at night to hang with his friends. He’s really good at history and English but terrible at math.

Also, he lives on the moon two thousand years from now and he’s legally prohibited from removing his glasses and showing anyone his eyes. Hieronymus suffers from a condition called Lunarcroptic Ocular Symbolanosis, which is to say that he was born with eyes tinted the fourth primary color. It’s not a mixture of the three primary colors we know, but a genuine fourth one, and people who don’t have the condition are unable to process it, which means that seeing the eyes of a hundred percent lunar person, as those with LOS are called, can cause seizures—although if the authorities are to be believed, it can cause madness. (Should a pair of hundred percenters look in each other’s eyes—WHICH HAS NEVER EVER HAPPENED—they will instantly die. Or so it’s said.) It also means that Hieronymus can see the future.

As Stephen Tunney’s One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy begins, Mus has shown his eyes to a terribly curious and terribly pretty girl from Earth, which puts him under suspicion by a determined policeman. He’s also at risk of having his extreme academic schizophrenia discovered—every other student in his high school is either on the smart track (the Toppers) or the dumb track (the Loopies), and he splits his time between the two, depending on which class it’s time for. The combination of these two factors—and the discovery of a certain book that bears no resemblance to its official version—leads to a mad adventure to the dark side of the moon, away from the overcrowded cities and suburbs Mus and his friends have known all their lives and into the wild wastes.

Tunney—who has published one previous novel, Flan—is primarily a musician and painter known by the pseudonym Dogbowl (he was a founding member of the experimental rock band King Missile and has released around a dozen solo albums). He writes with an artist’s skill at sketching character and place and with the imagination of a great science fiction writer. (I did find myself sometimes questioning his skill with naming characters—I kept wondering if there were puns I was missing in names like “Dogumanhed Schmet,” or if there was supposed to be a point that two characters have names that recall sixteenth-century Dutch artists.) There’s a definite undercurrent of social criticism running through the book—the hundred percenters as metaphor for insert-a-minority-here—but it doesn’t feel overbearing or get in the way of the fun.

According to the flap copy, One Hundred Percent Lunar Boy is intended to be the first book in a trilogy, and the novel’s final pages bear this out—it’s not necessarily a cliffhanger, but there are a lot of questions left unanswered. There doesn’t seem to be a set release date (or even a title) for book two yet, but I can’t wait. I recommend it highly for anyone in the mood for a slice of science fiction adventure with heart—if you liked Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (and if you didn’t, I can only presume that means you haven't read it yet), you’ll like this.

Where to Start

2012-01-03T11:05:00.000-08:00

You've seen Terry Pratchett's Discworld books recommended on this blog before. I mentioned two in this post, and recently Debra reviewed his latest (the 39th in the series), Snuff. If you read those posts you know already that you don't have to start reading the series with book #1. In fact, you can start pretty much anywhere. Everything you need to know is contained in each book. And even when information is repeated, Pratchett is clever enough to keep it interesting and funny every time.

That said, there's also no reason NOT to begin at the beginning. The first book in the series, The Colour of Magic, introduces readers at a somewhat greater length than the others to the cosmology of Discworld: Discworld is not a globe like Earth. Instead, it is a disc, this disc is help up on the backs of for enormous elephants. In turn, the elephants are standing on the back of a giant turtle, known as the Great A'Tuin. The Great A'Tuin, thus loaded, swims through space.

On the surface of Discworld, things look a little bit like they do on Earth, except with a lot more magic, magical creatures (witches, wizards, trolls, goblins, elves, dwarves, vampires, werewolves, Death, gods, demons, etc.), and a lot less of modern technology. In The Colour of Magic, a tourist (apparently the first that Discworld has ever seen) visits the seedy city of Ankh-Morpork snapping pictures with his demon-powered "picture box" and paying merchants large gold coins which he stores in self-propelled, semi-intelligent Luggage. The tourist, who goes by the name of Twoflowers, chooses Rincewind, a luckless dropout from wizarding school, as his guide. Twoflowers is determined to see every bit of the "quaint" and "picturesque" Ankh-Morpork despite the fact that most of the city--including, perhaps, his own guide--is out to rob and/or murder him.

If you have read other books in the series, you'll find The Colour of Magic interesting in what it reveals about the creation of Discworld. Many of the recurring characters and themes that define the series make their first appearance here. Death is about, regularly feeling cheated. The City Watch takes part, though the individual characters that make it up have yet to be revealed. Through Rincewind we learn much about Unseen University.

Like the other books in the series, The Colour of Magic is populated with deeply flawed characters, people who lie or cheat or are so naïve they deserve to be cheated but who are, nonetheless, entirely recognizable and entirely loveable.

There's nothing at all wrong with beginning at the beginning.

Everybody Sees the Ants by A. S. King

2012-01-02T05:00:00.000-08:00

When I sat down to start reading A.S. King's Everybody Sees the Ants, I thought I was just going to read a little bit to get started, and then put it down to go do something else. I should have learned from my similar experience with Please Ignore Vera Dietz, because three hours later I had finished the book and was screaming "Where was this book a decade ago, when it would have been infinitely more helpful?"

I'm pretty sure that particular feeling is just the occupational hazard of reading young adult books when one is not a young adult. In this case, it was brought on by the fact that Everybody Sees the Ants is less of a book about bullying—it feels like a disservice to try to sum it up that way—as it is a book about being young and male, and trying to figure out what that whole business of "being a man" is about in a society with strictly enforced gender norms. Especially when your particular experience of "being male" lies outside those gender norms.

It's also a book that's not afraid to raise these kinds of complex questions in the midst of reality-bending dream trips to Vietnam and snarky, culture-deconstructing talking ants.

A little bit of explanation may be in order: Lucky Linderman is off to California over summer vacation with his mother to visit his uncle and aunt as a direct result of the strange confluence of a strained parental relationship and concerns that Lucky may be suicidal. The latter concern is due to Lucky's decision to theme his survey-his-classmates assignment around suicide, a topic he found fascinating for intellectual reasons and which the school administration interpreted as a cry for help. The story of that assignment and its year-long fallout is told through backstory chapters while Lucky works through that fallout—and his other issues—over his extended vacation.

The former concern stems from his father's unwillingness to accept the loss of his own father—a Vietnam War POW who has long been presumed dead—and is mostly dealt with through Lucky's dreams, where he joins his grandfather in his POW camp and attempts to free him every night. Lucky usually fails (and his grandfather has a curious tendency to never have the same grievous injury twice), but usually his grandfather succeeds in passing on some kind of advice for Lucky's real life each night (along with whatever it is Lucky was holding when the dream ended, from sharpened spoons to chicken nuggets). It's a complicated story structure, but it holds together well and never gets confusing as all three storylines follow a common thematic thread wherever they intersect.

Aside from King's penchant for dispensing wisdom in the most irreverent manner possible, my favorite part of the book are the little surreal moments: Lucky bringing important objects given to him by his grandfather in a dream through to reality the next morning, the ants relentlessly mocking anyone and everyone. They're just weird enough to be recognizably unreal, but not excessive enough to move the book into the realm of fantasy. I'd call it "magic realism" but that label doesn't fit; I always think of magic realism as being a bit more ethereal than this book is. What it does do, however, is propel these bits straight into the realm of "blatantly obvious symbolism", and the more of that any given book has, the more I'm going to like it, if only because I love sitting around and explaining to everyone in a 500 yard radius whatever I derive from that symbolism.

And this may just be the adult in me speaking, but I absolutely love that King lets her adult characters be just as complex as her younger characters; there's no absentee parents or parental ciphers here, but adults that are going through the same problems that Lucky is going through, or feeling the repercussions from their choices about those same problems they made when they were younger. It's the sort of detail that's strangely comforting: the knowledge that these problems don't magically disappear just because you're older, and that everyone faces them, is as likely to be heartening as it is depressing.

If I can descend a bit into nattering about symbolism, these problems aren't the ants—the ants appear for everyone who's felt the crush of societal norms pushing against them, telling them to accept something or behave in a way they don't feel is "them", but they don't add to the suffering so much as highlight the absurdity of the situation, or offer sarcastic moral support.

And little ant-sized howitzers, if it comes to that.

The Make It Safe Project

2011-12-29T07:07:00.000-08:00

I just learned about The Make It Safe Project at Lee Wind's blog. I hope that you (yes, you, wonderful readers) will help support Amelia's efforts. Here's more about the project, as detailed at their website:

The Make It Safe Project donates books about sexual orientation and gender expression to schools and youth homeless shelters that lack the resources to keep their teens safe.

Giving: We donate books to K-12 schools, their Gay-Straight Alliances (a group that educates the school community about equality), and LGBT-inclusive youth homeless shelters nationwide. For information on how you can help give books or receive books for your school or shelter, please click here.

Support: If you are wondering what starting, leading, or joining a GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) would be like, you can browse through stories written by teens who have been involved with GSAs here.

Advice: If you have experience starting, leading, or being in a GSA, you can anonymously submit a story about your experience here.

One book can save a life.

For every $100 raised, the Make It Safe Project sends a pack of GLBTQ books to a school or youth homeless shelter. The pack will include around ten of the books on the following list:

Fiction Books
Ash by Melinda Lo
Annie On My Mind by Nancy Gardener
Empress of the World by Sara Ryan
Luna by Julie Anne Peters
Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by David Levithan
Parrotfish by Ellen Wittlinger
Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez

Nonfiction Books
It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living edited by Dan Savage and Terry Miller
GLBTQ: The Survival Guide for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning Teens by Kelly Huegel
Queer: The Ultimate LGBT Guide for Teens by Kathy Belge
Kicked Out edited by Sassafras Lowry
Like Me by Chely Wright
Let's Get This Straight: The Ultimate Handbook for Youth with LGBTQ Parents by Tina Fakhrid-Deen

If you are a student, teacher, parent, or principal at any K-12 school or a volunteer or client at a youth homeless shelter in the USA and your school or shelter is in need of books, please contact the Make It Safe Project.

The Stupendous Dodgeball Fiasco by Janice Repka

2011-12-28T02:00:00.000-08:00

With a plot line parallel to what's going on with this season of Glee, where Kurt's campaign platform for student government was to end dodgeball, this Middle Grade novel is a fast and fun read.

Phillip's dad is a clown. Literally. He's Leo Laugh-a-Lot. Phillip's mom is The Fat Lady. But 11 year old Phillip doesn't fit in at the Windy Van Hooten Circus. He doesn't want to be the guy following behind the elephants with the giant pooper-scooper. And everything 'circus' he tries to do ends in disaster. All Phillip wants is to be a regular kid.

So when he goes to live with his aunt and uncle in Hardington, the unofficial Dodgeball Capital of the World and home to The American Dodgeball Company, he thinks he's finally gotten his chance.

But there's a bully, B.B., who doesn't like him. Her dad is the hard-as-nails P.E. Coach. And every P.E. class is dodgeball. Every. Single. One.And Phillip is the #1 target.
Phillip keeps getting creamed in dodgeball, and when B.B. sends a screamer right at his face and his glasses break, he's had enough. When it costs his aunt more than two hundred dollars for new glasses, Phillip decides to take his bully to court to make her pay for the glasses.

And suddenly, it's not just about his glasses. It's about stopping the terror of dodgeball for all the kids who get hit with screamers every day. Dodgeball is dangerous.

But Phillip has started a war against the whole town of Hardington. Against the American Dodgeball Company. Against the American Dodgeball way of life. In the words of the book blurb,

"Can the elephant-poop scooping circus boy win his case and make life safer for everyone?"

Peppered with stylized and expressive illustrations by Glin Dibley, this story is entertaining and makes you think. It digs into some great issues of bullying and standing up - for yourself and others.

I was rooting for Phillip, and liked how BB wasn't a cardboard villain, but a real girl who's a bully, and might be more... I also liked how not everyone is who they seem to be, and there were some unexpected twists that made the ride more enjoyable.

Also, every chapter began with a 'circus saying' - some bit of circus lore, like Confucius wisdom or Fortune Cookie fortunes, but with a circus twist - like this one on page 125:

Pink Lemonade was created accidentally by a circus vendor who used a bucket of water that another performer had washed her red tights in. Whenever someone is being careless because they're rushing, circus performers say they're "making pink lemonade."

It infused the whole book with that circus feel, and made this tale of a boy, and a town, overcoming bullying really fun!

Sidekicks by Jack D. Ferraiolo

2011-12-26T14:45:00.000-08:00

After spending the past six year as sidekick to the famous superhero Phantom Justice, Bright Boy (real name: Scott Hutchinson) decides it’s time for a change. Scott still believes in saving people from evil villains, but can’t he do it while wearing something other than bright yellow tights? The tights are embarrassing to begin with, but when television cameras catch him getting a little, uh, involuntarily excited while holding the very attractive woman he just rescued, Bright Boy becomes a joke. Seriously, even the little kids at Scott’s school are laughing at Bright Boy.

It doesn’t help that Phantom Justice’s archnemesis, Dr. Chaotic, returned to town after a five-year hiatus (translation: he just broke out of prison). Dr. Chaotic’s sidekick, Monkeywrench, was always a thorn in Bright Boy’s side, and now Monkeywrench is back as well. Only Monkeywrench now has a brand new, totally awesome, costume.

So not fair.
Phantom Justice refuses to listen to Scott’s complaints about his Bright Boy costume. Nothing their butler/trainer Louis says can convince Phantom Justice, either. No one else knows that Scott is Bright Boy, which is fine; Scott understands why Bright Boy’s identity must be kept secret. And, hey, at least this means no one knows it was Scott who had that untimely physical reaction.

Until Bright Boy and Monkeywrench lose their masks while battling one night, and Scott immediately recognizes Monkeywrench as one of his classmates.

Jack D. Ferraiolo’s Sidekicks is funny and fast-paced, with unexpected twists that kept me glued to the pages. Ferraiolo, a writer and producer of children's television shows, is as adept at writing action scenes as he is delving into Scott's emotions. And, perhaps due his television background, the story feels tightly written, without any padding or momentum-sapping scenes. Not until the very end of the book (in all honesty, my least favorite part) does Sidekicks lose a bit of steam. However, even taking this into account, Sidekicks is one of my favorite books of the year, an entertaining mix of humor, action, and depth, starring a likable, sympathetic main character.
Book source: public library.

Cross-posted at The YA YA YAs.

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

2011-12-23T04:50:00.000-08:00

The wolves will not stop chasing Ben through his dreams. They are wild and persistent, leaving paw prints in the snow next to Gunflint Lake, Minnesota: The boy's home.

Jump back fifty years. Rose lives just outside of New York City, where the bright lights and tall towers tempt her to visit--much against her parents’ wishes. Though separated by time, Ben and Rose are both looking for a place where they can belong. Thus begins Wonderstruck.

The book is a mighty 637 pages, but when it comes to getting children to read such a gargantuan thing, author and illustrator Brian Selznick has a neat trick up his sleeve. Pictures make up 460 pages of the book while the rest is text. It’s a rare medium: a picture book with chapters. So it’s no surprise that Selznick won the Caldecott Medal in 2008 for his first attempt at such a work, The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

This time Selznick chose to push himself even further by attempting to tell two separate stories, one entirely in text and the other entirely in pictures. Children can read about Ben’s journey, caused by his mother’s death and a desire to find the father he never knew. In 1977, Ben goes to New York, where he thinks that his dad might have something to do with either a bookstore or the American Museum of Natural History (which mysteriously has a diorama of wolves from Gunflint Lake!). He is, for the moment, deaf after falling victim to a lightning strike. His curiosity and persistence makes up for that fact.

Rose is also deaf. She lives in 1927, and her favorite activity of seeing movies is about to be changed forever. The silent films with intertitles that she can normally read along to are about to be replaced by sound film. Rose must learn to lip read if she is going to make it in the world, and she hates her current teacher. She also escapes to New York on a mission.

As the stories progress, twisting and turning all the way, they merge into a lovely tale of family, connection, and finding the place where we feel like we belong. The inclusion of lyrics from David Bowie and a quote from Oscar Wilde gives young readers a chance to be introduced to other artistic works, perhaps igniting a desire to explore them in their own right.

Selznick’s detailed pencil illustrations breathe and pulse with life. His ability to create a sense of a camera zooming in over a series of pages is cinematic in scope and wonderful in its ability to focus deeply on a subject.

Wonderstruck was an absolute treat. It exceeded my expectations as a follow up to Selznick’s last book and has me looking forward to what he will create in the future. I hope that others will feel the same.

Cross-Posted to LibraryPoint

The Mind's Prisoner

2011-12-20T08:31:00.000-08:00

Sapphique, the sequel to Katharine Fisher's Incarceron, continues the story of two dystopic worlds: one, the Realm, artificially frozen in time roughly around the 18th century; the other, Incarceron, a failed uptopia set up for the incarceration and rehabilitation of massive numbers of The Realm's prisoners, which has instead devolved into a kind of organic-mechanical hybrid hell full of metal forests and half-mechanical animals. Travel between the two worlds (or even any sharing of knowledge) is forbidden for all except the Warden of Incarceron. One legendary figure, however, Sapphique, escaped long ago, leaving behind him a religious hope in both worlds fueled by tales of his exploits.

SPOILER ALERT: To speak of Sapphique requires that we reveal some of the surprises of Incarceron. So if you are determined to have nothing spoiled, go read volume one now. Kelly Fineman has an excellent review of Incarceron here.

In Incarceron, a couple of other "impossible" escapes are either achieved or revealed. Claudia, the Warden's daughter, discovers that she was born in Incarceron and removed by the Warden to be raised as his heir whom he hoped to marry to the next King of the Realm. Claudia, a rebellious child, steals the Warden's key and manages to return to Incarceron where she helps free an amnesiac boy named Finn who may or may not be the true heir to the throne of the Realm. Finn leaves behind his friends Attia and Kerio, swearing to use his power in the Realm to free them. Too many of his secrets revealed, the Warden escapes to Incarceron, damaging the portal so that none can follow him.

Incarceron is not only the prison, but also an intelligence, long gone insane, which runs the prison's systems. Incarceron can produce eyes anywhere within the prison to monitor its activities but it can never see outside itself. Aware that there is an outside world and that all of its senses are turned inward, Incarceron, like its prisoners, wishes to escape. In Sapphique, the prison works with the Warden to build itself a body so that it can abandon the physical prison and its prisoners to explore the outside world. But to achieve this, Incarceron needs one final piece, a glove that once belonged to the legendary Sapphique and which Attia and Keiro have managed to acquire.

Meanwhile, in the Realm, Claudia's tutor Jared attempts to repair the portal but only succeeds in turning it into a kind of replicator. When he tests it on a feather, dozens of feathers burst from it into the portal while a storm of feathers rains down inside Incarceron. Also, Claudia's plan to make Finn the King is complicated by another claimant to the throne who arrives out of nowhere and looks virtually identical to Finn.

As you can gather from the synopsis, the plot of these stories is intricate. Plenty remains unexplained even after 600 pages, but piecing together the history and the logic of these worlds is much of the fun of reading them. The rest is in the intense and surreal action sequences which occur within the nightmarish world of Incarceron and in the subtle and sometimes violent games carried out by members of the Realm's court. Finally there are the inescapable existential questions which the story raises: aren't we all, after all, prisoners within our own minds?

Amulet by Kazu Kibuishi

2011-12-19T01:57:00.000-08:00

Amulet is the long running graphic novel series by Kazu Kibuishi. The series began in 2008 with the Stonekeeper and earlier this year the fourth installment, The Last Council, was published.

The Amulet series began with a car accident and the tragic death of Emily and Navin’s father. When the family moves to live in the abandoned home of Silas, the children's grandfather, they are drawn into the world of Alledia where their mother is abducted by a creepy, walking, squid-type creature. Emily and Navin plunge into the world to save her. Luckily the children have the help of Silas’ inventions and find Silas himself, though he only has enough strength left to explain the choice Emily must make concerning a magical amulet she found in his house.

Emily accepts the power of the amulet to become a Stonekeeper, but it becomes a double edged sword. Emily must save the world of Alledia and finds that the amulet's motives are not always pure, much like the ring in J.R.R. Tolkien's epic series.

In the fourth book we find that Emily's crew has grown and she has seemingly succeeded in completing an important quest, which was to find the lost city of Cielis and receive help from the Guardian Council. There is, however, something wrong with the city with its scared residents and large prison. Emily decides to go along with the training program for Stonekeepers despite the uneasy feeling that they need to flee.

The real power of Amulet is not in the action and adventure, which is great, but in how Emily fares in becoming the leader of her family and working to navigate in a simultaneously beautiful and horrifying world she doesn't understand. Early in the book, Emily is told, "When you begin to realize the true weight of your actions you will awaken to become the person this world needs you to be."

Amulet is a wonderful series with emotional depth, exciting action and a fascinating world to explore. Fans of Jeff Smith's Bone and anything by Doug TenNapel will enjoy Amulet.

Ghosts of Ascalon by Matt Forbeck and Jeff Grubb

2011-12-16T02:00:00.000-08:00

Books based on computer games? It’s the best of both worlds! Many different games have a literary component to their worlds: WoW, Starcraft, and Halo to name a few. With Ghosts of Ascalon, the PC game Guild Wars recently entered the list of games with novels based on their lore. You don't have to be a fan of the game though, or have ever played the game, or even be at all familiar with the setting to enjoy the book.

Ghosts of Ascalon, by Matt Forbeck and Jeff Grubb, reads as a fun fantasy novel. Dougal Keane lives a threadbare existence selling his services as a guide and trap springer. After a brutal treasure hunt, an old friend springs him from jail demanding his services as a guide back to the one place he never wants to return: Ascalon City. Ascalon is the site of the infamous last battle between King Adelbern and the invading race known as the Charr. The Charr claim it as their homeland as do many of the humans of the continent of Kryta. Dougal Keane was the only survivor of his last trip there. His mission this time, along with his friends, will be to retrieve a sacred Charr relic called the Claw of the Khan-Ur. This relic could help foster a truce between the humans of Kryta and the Charr.

Dougal's story lead us on treasure hunts reminiscent of the adventures of Indiana Jones, through caves and ruins, with deadly traps aplenty and even deadlier opponents. The history of this world, Kryta, is touched on, hinting at the larger world and war with the Elder Dragons and the devastation they've brought. We meet interesting characters of each race: Human, the huge Norn, the monsterous cat-like Charr, the mysterious Sylvari, and the haughty Asura. Each race and character contributes in different ways to the progress of the story and, within the story, their own unique traits to the battles and adventures - whether it's raising an army of undead, raining fire on the bad guys, swinging a sword or a battle axe, or building a magical construct out of gems and stone to fight.

As the title suggests, there are indeed ghosts within the city of Ascalon: the ghosts of the entire Ascalonian Army that King Adelbern sacrificed to keep the Charr out. And they are not happy that Dougal and his group are in their realm. These ghosts view all trespassers as enemies, human and non-human alike.

If you like fantasy stories or playing fantasy-based computer games, you’ll like Ghosts of Ascalon.

The Inquisitor's Apprentice

2011-12-15T11:16:00.000-08:00

I'll be honest, this past year I've stepped away from YA and MG fiction, taking some time away from kidlit just to recharge my batteries. This fall, though, I dove back in big time. Gorging on one kind of book (in this case, fantasy and science fiction), one genre can be a real recipe for burnout. But the really great books that rise above all others can excite in ways that aren't just about the thrills of one book, but the kind of thrills that make you eager to pick up other books because they remind you just how awesome reading can be. One of those books, for me, is The Inquisitor's Apprentice by Chris Moriarty. Read on to find out why...

First, it has a great premise: New York City, at the turn of the century, in a world with magic. Sacha, a young Jewish kid who can see magic, is apprenticed to the NYPD Inquisitor's division: the cops who solve magical crime. But more than having a great premise, this book acts on the best possible development of that premise. For a set-up that could fall into some old-timey Law & Order: Magical Crimes plot, it instead takes its time to become something all its own.

Second, it's steeped in the mood, character, and sensibilities of a great time period, but it doesn't get bogged down in capital H history the way historical fiction can. The Inquisitor's Apprentice is as much an alternate history of America, and New York specifically, as it is a fantasy, and the great thing about alternate histories is that the writer can comb the past for the awesome stuff, but not be held captive by the past. Similarly, the reader can enjoy a richly realized story without having to know who exactly every character is (or was).

Third, it's a tightly wound mystery, with personal stakes for Sacha. I love mysteries, but too often the only thing on the line for the main characters is whether or not they can solve everything in time before the bad guys get to them. But here, the more Sacha uncovers about the main crime (someone is trying to assassinate Thomas Edison using a Dybbuk, or Jewish doppleganger demon), the more he realizes he's involved in this up to his eyeballs.

The book's not perfect: I love the character of Sacha, but I wish he were more active. He reminds me of the main character Lewis from one of my all-time favorite books The House with a Clock in Its Walls, by John Bellairs, only not as whiny. So that's some good company to be in. All the characters in the book or fully realized, both on the page and in the mind of the reader.

Also, I wish the magic wasn't quite so... vague. Not that I want a wizard's manual, but sometimes the magic in the book seemed all too squishy, lacking the concrete-ness to stand on its own apart from whatever the needs of the plot are at the moment.

But, those quibbles aside, I loved this book. Above all, this is a book whose world I want to return to again and again, and, thankfully, the ending leaves an opening for more adventures of Sacha Lessing in the Inquisitor's Bureau of the NYPD.

Books mentioned in this review:
The Inquisitor's Apprentice by Chris Moriarty
The House with a Clock in Its Walls by John Bellairs

420, Scientific Atheism, and Street Photography

2011-12-14T11:19:00.000-08:00

photo: Vivian Maier

Toward the end of the year I get this sudden urge to want to recommend all sort of books to people, mostly stemming from years of retail bookselling where that was all I did for the last six weeks of the year. And because publishers know this is where they can scoop up a large chunk of annual revenues the holiday season is full of all kinds of attractive new releases.

Many of which I want for myself.

This leads me down a path where I sometimes think holiday shopping can make us all a little selfish. But weeding through my various wish lists I find a number of things that would make interesting and inspiring gifts for teen guys, particularly creative, free-thinkers.

FOR THE WORDSMITH...

Here's an interesting concept that's already dated. What if you were limited to the amount of space in a Facebook update to tell a complete short story? This was what illustrator Lou Beach did with 420 Characters, and what makes this concept now dated is the recent development that Facebook has begun allowing for status update "limits" of 63,200 characters – more than some short novellas! And even though the concept isn't new (see Three-Line Novels by Felix Feneon) Beach managed to garner enough interest to get folks like Jeff Bridges and Ian MacShane and Dave Alvin to record some of the stories for his website www.420characters.com.

The appeal here is on many fronts. First, it's short and sweet and perfect for limited attention spans. I don't mean that as an insult, only as a way of suggesting that guy don't always have large chunks of time to read and they should have options beyond a couple levels of Angry Birds at their disposal. Second, I think guys would benefit from learning how to write clear, concise, and complete short stories like these. There is an art to this sort of brevity and, like a haiku, the effort of fitting form can force and otherwise lazy writer (or poet) into sharpening their vision. Finally, it's a beautiful book, certainly more beautiful than a collection of status updates would generally deserve, and the kind of book that invites repeated visits.

FOR THE SCIENTIFIC PHILOSOPHER...

This could be a touchy one for some people as it is written by an avowed atheist, but he's no raving madman but a curious scientific intellectual. Richard Dawkins The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True is the sort of general science textbook that most schools would be afraid to use, but should, because it doesn't shy away from saying what many fear science textbooks do: it calls religious stories fictions. Dawkins doesn't suggest that stories from the bible and other cultures as alternate explanations of science, he flat out calls them fictions and goes about discussing how science approaches the study of various questions through careful explanation and suggested mental experiments.

Using twelve questions as the basis of each chapter – from "Who was the first person?" to "What is a rainbow?" to "What is a miracle?" – Dawkins begins with a common myth or story or legend and proceeds to give the science-based explanation in a clear, logical and often elegant progression of thought. His explanation of evolution, a hot topic if ever there was one, draws on he reader to imagine their own progression from infant to adult as a type of evolution before putting the reader in a time machine to visit ancient ancestors to show human evolution from its infancy to its current state. Even by stating such potentially controversial ideas as fact doesn't prevent the reader from engaging in a personal dialog to ask whether or not they believe what he is saying. This, I think, is what makes this a potentially great science book for teens as Dawkins starts with big questions and the proceeds to dissect them to the point where the reader must either draw the same conclusions or start asking some big questions of their own.

The icing on this cake for me is that the book is richly illustrated by Dave McKean, illustrator for Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics and plenty of other great books. Done in a combination of collage, comic, and mixed media, McKean's work in this light suggests that there may be a future in textbooks for other illustrators of renown... if textbook publishers were interested in making their books more interesting and not pricing themselves out of business in this digital age.

FOR THE VISIONARY...

In a culture where we measure creative success by fame and fortune, perhaps we need to be showing teens more about what it means to be an artist of the 99%. By that I don't mean becoming the modern version WPA documentarian Dorothea Lange taking picture of our contemporary versions of Dust Bowl Oakies occupying various city centers, but by acknowledging that there is more to creative fulfillment than aspiring to becoming the 1% that makes it into galleries and museums. For that we turn to Vivian Maier: Street Photographer, edited by John Maloof.

For the majority of her adult life, over forty years, Maier worked as a nanny while taking pictures on the streets of Chicago's North Shore. When she had time off she traveled the world and took pictures as well as made recordings of the people she took pictures of. And when she changed jobs she brought with her boxes and boxes of undeveloped and unprinted negatives, nearly 100,000 of them. It may be wrong to suggest that the only true artist is one for whom the journey is the destination, that for Maier the prints and exhibition weren't important, but what is evident in this recently discovered trove of photos is the unflinching determination it takes to train and develop a visual style. Digital photography and after-image processing have made it possible for anyone with a smart phone these days to take seemingly gallery-worthy pictures but even the most casual glance through Vivian Maier's work is to not only wonder how, exactly, she managed to capture the images she did through such old school methods, but why? What was her muse, her driving force? Little is really known about Maier though efforts are under way with this book and a forthcoming documentary to help fill some of the gaps. But for the budding photographer there is a lot to learn from the images she left behind.

Three? Can I really limit my year-end recommended list to three? I have to, otherwise I'd be writing this post all week, remembering new titles as I go. Suffice to say that an in-depth scan of all the reviews here on Guys Lit Wire for the past year will yield more than enough suggestions for teen guy readers of every age and interest. And if you're really not sure about that boy reader, there are always gift cards.

Just make sure they are gift cards for indie bookstores

Books mentioned...

420 Characters
by Lou Beach
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2011

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True
by Richard Dawkins
Free Press 2011

Vivian Maier: Street Photographer
edited by John Maloof
powerHouse Books 2011

Ready Player One

2011-12-14T07:08:00.000-08:00

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Insert quarter. Ready Player One. Designed by Ernest Cline.

Level One: The story of Wade Watts in the year 2044, as the teen tries to navigate a cruel reality as he simultaneously navigates the much cooler virtual reality of OASIS, a massive multiplayer world that (think WoW X Second Life X Facebook, and then put an exponent around your product) everyone is playing and many have made their preferred existence.

Level Two: The adventures of Parzival, the avatar of Wade Watts in OASIS, as he tries to solve the puzzles hidden by the creator of OASIS, James Halliday. Solving the puzzles will lead to the ultimate Easter egg and the acquisition of Halliday’s fortune. The puzzles are decipherable only with encyclopedic knowledge of everything 80s, the childhood era of Halliday himself. The problem is that millions (billions?) of other people are searching for the same thing, as is one evil corporation, Innovative Online Industries (IOI). And as Parzival becomes more successful at solving these puzzles, IOI starts coming after not only Parzival, but his real-world creator Wade Watts. Levels One and Two begin to merge in dangerous and exciting ways, as Parzival/Wade faces puzzles and “quests” inside and outside of OASIS.

Level Three: A surprisingly thoughtful exploration of the notion of identity in the virtual age. Parzival knows his competitors and eventual allies (Art3mis, Aech, Daito, and Shoto) only as avatars. As the gunters (as the puzzle questers are known) and the IOI operatives come closer in their race to find the Easter egg, Cline presents us with multiple notions of identity. And Parzival/Wade (along with the reader) must come to terms with the disparity between virtual and real identities.

Bonus Level: A frothy wallop of 80’s nostalgia—video games, music, movies, television. Some of it is explained for the benefit of those who are not fluent in Eighties, some of it exists solely as golden coins for those of us who are. The measure of Cline’s skill, however, is that the book works even for those who may not catch all the references. Like a futuristic palimpsest, Cline gives us a classic coming-of-age story, with elements of geek love and the value of friendship, played out in a virtual quest in a world that faithfully recreates the coming of age of its creator. The only thing that could make Ready Player One better is if it came with its own joystick.

Continue? Insert additional quarter.

On Writing by Stephen King

2011-12-13T21:04:00.000-08:00

I bought a copy of Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft when it first came out eleven years ago. It's an interesting sort of book - part memoir (pretty much to the point of being a personal exposé), part inspiration, part nuts & bolts writing advice, filled with the sort of humor you'd expect from Stephen King (if you've read enough of his work or have heard him speak, that is, and know better to expect only thrills and chills from his work).

Part of his memoir was included in Guys Write for Guys Read, an anthology previously reviewed here. That excerpt from On Writing is a painfully funny story about a babysitter named "Eula, or maybe she was Beaulah. She was a teenager, she was as big as a house, and she laughed a lot. Eula-Beulah had a wonderful sense of humor, even at four I could recognize that, but it was a dangerous sense of humor . . ." King relates a series of horrible-yet-funny stories involving this particular babysitter, including that "Eula-Beulah was prone to farts--the kind that are both loud and smelly. Sometimes when she was so afflicted, she would throw me on the couch, drop her wool-skirted butt on my face, and let loose. 'Pow!' she'd cry in high glee."
King discusses his history, including the highs (actual as well as metaphorical) and lows (again, actual as well as metaphorical), from starting out writing as a teen to wide publication to addiction to the accident that nearly killed him. (For those not familiar with his history, King was struck by a car while walking along the side of the road.)

And then, he turns to the subject of writing, providing guidance in one of the most cogent, useful ways of describing "What Writing Is" that I've ever had the privilege to read.

What Writing Is

Telepathy, of course. It's amusing when you stop to think about it--for years people have argued about whether or not such a thing exists, folks like J. B. Rhine have busted their brains trying to create a valid testing process to isolate it, and all the time it's been right there, lying out in the open like Mr. Poe's Purloined Letter. All the arts depend upon telepathy to some degree, but I believe that writing offers the purest distillation. Perhaps I'm prejudiced, but even if I am we may as well stick with writing, since it's what we came here to think and talk about.

* * *

Look--here's a table covered with a red cloth. On it is a cage the size of a small fish aquarium. In the cage is a white rabbit with a pink nose and pink-rimmed eyes. In its front paws is a carrot-stub upon which it is contentedly munching. On its back, clearly marked in blue ink, is the numeral 8.

Do we see the same thing? We'd have to get together and compare notes to make absolutely sure, but I think we do.

The book includes a "toolbox" - things that writers need, such as grammar, followed by what King refers to as "the heart of the book": the section called "On Writing", in which Stephen King shares everything he knows about how to write good fiction. And then he presents the start of a short story ("The Hotel Story") that began as an exercise for this book, but eventually became the much-anthologized "Room 1408" (which itself became a movie).

Highly recommended for people who are interested in Stephen King, in good writing, in improving their own writing or becoming a writer. And widely available in various editions suitable for holiday gift-giving, including ebook editions.

This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein by Kenneth Oppel

2011-12-10T11:23:00.000-08:00

You probably know Mary Shelley's classic Gothic horror, Frankenstein. Mad scientist creates monster, monster kills a bunch of people. And of course, we are left with the question -- just who is the monster in the story? I imagine that is one of the questions Kenneth Oppel asked when he started to write This Dark Endeavor, the first book in a new series exploring just what set young Victor Frankenstein on the descent into darkness.

It is summer in Geneva and it seems that 16 year old Victor Frankenstein, his twin brother Konrad, their cousin Elizabeth and their good friend Henry have nothing more exciting on the horizon than boating on Lake Geneva, riding through the countryside surrounding Château Frankenstein and putting on plays that Henry writes for the group. Then Konrad falls deathly ill. No doctor can help him. So Victor, Elizabeth and Henry, with help from mad alchemist and an old book they found in the château's Biblioteka Obscura, set out to find and make the Elixir of Life and cure Konrad. Of course, getting mixed up in alchemy, well, you know it won't end well.

I did not particularly like Victor as a character, but the best thing about Kenneth Oppel's writing is that he gets the details just right. He builds Victor into a complex and interesting character, and I even though I didn't like him and I knew how his story would end, I still found a lot in Victor with which I could sympathize. I had to keep reading, knowing tragedy was coming. But Oppel made me believe and hope that Victor could turn his story around.

I loved Frankenstein. I loved wrestling with the complex themes, but it left me wanting more, and This Dark Endeavor is an excellent companion to Shelley's classic AND an excellent story in its own right. I can't wait for the sequel.

Saint George and the dragon: Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem

2011-12-09T10:04:00.000-08:00

Saint George and the Dragon. In case we don’t remember the story: there’s a city, outside of which lives a horrific dragon. To stop him from terrorizing the city, the citizens periodically deliver their younger members as sacrifice. One day, George, knight in shining armor, arrives to save them from their oppression. He is baptized, takes the sign of the cross as his protection, and rides out to slay the dragon. He does, of course, peace is restored, and the people go on to healthy, normal, well-adjusted lives.

But let’s consider this story from another vantage. What if we discard the knights and dragons? What if this is a story about Christian modernity imposing itself upon—wiping out really—a native pre-modern system of beliefs? The dragon as the embodiment of all the druids and witches and wild, uncontrolled, earthly paganism that grew up out of the land. Saint George riding in on the productive rationality of a new era. For those of the modern persuasion, this a winning tale. Rationality, productivity, order: not bad things for your patron saint to represent. However, to the adherents of the pre-modern this is the end of a way of life - collateral loss in the inexorable onward march of Civilization.

Such is the moment at which we encounter “Rooster” Johnny Byron at the start of of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem. He lives alone in his trailer, inhabiting—squatting, really—a patch of woods at the edge of what has during that time become a nice, prosperous subdevelopment. One imagines rows of freshly-painted McMansions. A fixture in the village for decades, he’s known by all for better or worse, barred from every pub and the go-to for drugs and drink. As the dawn breaks, two policepersons are serving him yet another notice of complaint after yet another raging party the night before. When he finally emerges from the trailer, he runs through what appears to be a hangover-curing routine–cold water, raw eggs–while trying to piece together the blackout part of his night. He’s amazed to discover that he’s led the assembled in a cheering assault upon his flat-screen television, the pieces of which now lie scattered about the stage. This is our hero, this wild, reckless, drunken fool of a mess.

The Times and other reviewers of last season’s Broadway production made much of Rooster’s self-mythologizing. He is a man of stories. He tells of being born to a virgin, fully-developed--hair and all--with a bullet clenched in his teeth. He tells of meeting one of the giants while wandering the countryside at dawn and being given a drum to call for their help in crisis. Others tell stories, too. Of his brilliance as a stunt jumper. Of the time he died and, after the paramedics gave up, simply came back to life. But these stories aren’t merely indications of his Falstaffian larger-than-life persona, Mr. Brantly; Rooster is myth itself. Whether the stories are true or not matters little. He believes them. Somehow he gets you to, as well. And belief is the key to their life. His stories are legends and he is the dragon - the last holdout of that uncontrolled, expansive, and, yes, dangerous ancient magic. The destroyed television is a marker for what proceeds: his drunken antics are unconsciously purposeful, the sleek functionality of the flatscreen destroyed in the ecstacy of the bacchanal, wild antagonism against the encroaching Modern.

The play, in its oh so Aristotlean way, spans a single Saint George’s Day, the festivals and parades commemorating the knight’s victory a ticking clock on the last of Rooster and his wood - tomorrow the bulldozers come to evict him before the land gives way to more cookie cutter-clean housing estates. Modernity will come to plow under its opposition.

It may not seem like such a bad idea to get rid of this nuisance with the loud music and drugs, the tax evasion and squatting. Raise some property values and improve the view while they’re at it. Why not; even the gang that hangs ‘round Rooster can’t respect him. They’ll take his drugs and liquor, but they’ll piss on him while he’s passed out. And yet, they keep coming back. They can’t articulate it, but Rooster offers them something more than just escape; he provides connection and understanding for people who find themselves at odds with the world. A doddering, old professor, mind half gone, who finds his stories and mistaken identities indulged. The young man hoping to fill an interior emptiness on an Australian walkabout, given ceremonial blessing as he departs, though it’s clear he’ll never make it to Australia. Rooster extends the same expansive acceptance he gives his stories onto their dreams and needs, creating a refuge for the parts of them that don’t quite fit into a rational world on the march, the parts to which this world has lost the ability to respond. These people all have within them a deep, unspoken sense of what’s been lost in the flattening, the standardization that comes with modernity. Rooster is the remaining possibility of what might have been.

Naturally, the possibility of alternatives is a threat to the dominant order and the dragon must be slain. While the official machinery of the city prepares to move its bulldozers into place, Rooster receives a savage beating from individual enforces of the order whom he has dared offend. The bulldozers will still come, but the ultimate defeat arrives in the beating, the violence not of systemic action, but of individuals so thoroughly enveloped in the system that they have taken its mission of conquest upon themselves. The people have abandoned and forgotten the old order. Even the ones who come to its moments of escape will kick it to the ground as soon as their needs are sated. Rooster was defeated from the start. The beating culminates in a branding, a large X burned into Rooster’s skin. But this X can also be read as the Saint George’s cross, the red intersecting lines on a background of white skin. Broken, bloody, and marked, Rooster frantically but steadily beats the giant’s drum, a mystical dying plea into the darkness. The dragon, awful and necessary, howls as it falls to the onward march of the knight’s crusade.

Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe, by Jane Goodall

2011-12-08T00:01:00.000-08:00

There's no doubt in my mind that understanding human behavior is easier if you look at other primates too.

Jane Goodall looks back Through a Window to tell us what she learned studying chimpanzees for thirty years. Her earlier book, In the Shadow of Man, was good, but this one's importance is hard to overstate. It's not easy choosing what to quote, but here goes:

Often I have gazed into a chimpanzee's eyes and wondered what was going on behind them... I shall never forget my meeting with Lucy, an eight-year-old home-raised chimpanzee... Lucy, having grown up as a human child, was like a changeling... I watched, amazed, as she opened the refrigerator and various cupboards, found bottles and a glass, then poured herself a gin and tonic. She took the drink to the TV, turned the set on, flipped from one channel to another then, as though in disgust, turned it off again. She selected a glossy magazine from the table and, still carrying her drink, settled in a comfortable chair. Occasionally, as she leafed through the magazine she identified something she saw, using... American Sign Language...

Chimpanzees can plan ahead... at Gombe, during the termiting season: often an individual prepares a tool for use on a termite mound that is several hundred yards away and absolutely out of sight.

...chimpanzees possess pre-mathematical skills: they can ... differentiate between more and less. They can classify things into specific categories... separating a pile of food into fruits and vegetables on one occasion,
and, on another, dividing the same pile into large versus small items, even though this requires putting some vegetables with some fruits.Chimpanzees who have been taught a language can combine signs creatively in order to describe objects for which they have no symbol. Washoe, for example, puzzled her caretakers by asking, repeatedly, for a rock berry. Eventually it transpired that she was referring to Brazil nuts which she had encountered for the first time a while before. Another language-trained chimp described a cucumber as a green banana, and another referred to an Alka-Seltzer as a listen drink. They can even invent signs. Lucy, as she got older, had to be put on a leash for her outings. One day, eager to set off but having no sign for leash, she signalled her wishes by holding a crooked index finger to the ring on her collar. This sign became part of her vocabulary... Some chimpanzees love to draw, and especially to paint. Those who have learned sign language sometimes spontaneously label their works, 'This [is] apple' - or bird, or sweetcorn, or whatever.

Ms. Goodall tells about chimpanzee families over the thirty years of her study, so we get to watch them as they grow up and assume different roles throughout their lives. There are human parallels that are immediately recognizable. There are wonderful photographs. I can't praise this book enough!

I assumed this book would be shelved in our library with the other chimp books, but I was wrong. Someone cataloged it as (auto)biography (It does tell some of the story of her life.). So if you don't find it on your library shelves with the chimpanzee books, check the biography section, under "Goodall."

Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer

2011-12-06T22:13:00.000-08:00

“I closed my eyes again and saw myself back at the foot of my parents’ driveway. The enormous jar of pickled garlic was just where I’d left it. I walked up the path to the front door. There was Claudia Schiffer, seductively scrubbing herself with a sponge in a tub of cottage cheese. I opened the door and turned to the left, and inhaled a noseful of the fish that was still laid out across the strings of the piano, curing in peat smoke. I felt its flavor on my tongue. I could hear the high-pitched chatter of those haughty wine bottles on the couch, and feel the three pairs of luxurious cotton socks on the lamp brushing softly against my forehead.”

What is this—a passage from some lost surrealist novel or a scene from a movie aping early Buñuel? Nope, it’s a memory palace.

And what, pray tell is a memory palace? That’s a better question.The idea stems, legend has it, from a disaster at a banquet in Greece in the fifth century BC. The story (as related by Cicero in his work De oratore) goes that, immediately after delivering an ode on the party’s host, the poet Simonides of Ceos stepped outside for some air, just in time to see the hall’s roof collapse, killing everyone inside and entombing them. In an effort to help find the bodies, Simonides forced himself to remember exactly where in the banquet hall each attendee had been seated during his speech, and lo it worked—the corpses were all recovered. Over the ensuring centuries, the technique was revised, expanded, and codified by minds great and less than great, notably the sixteenth-century friar and mystic Giordano Bruno (a fascinating genius who was - like so many fascinating geniuses of the day—ultimately burned at the stake for heresy), until it reached the form it exists in today, where memorizers make celebrities do strange things in their minds to assist in recalling strings of numbers in the name of winning trophies. (Oddly enough, it showed up in two other books that I read shortly after this one, Paul Auster’s Moon Palace and Dana Spiotta’s Stone Arabia, although I was first made aware of the concept in John Crowley’s amazing Aegypt quartet, in which Bruno figures as a major character.)

It is this “method of loci” (as it is also called) that is discovered by Joshua Foer in the process that led to his book Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. Foer (younger brother of Jonathan and Franklin) finds himself drawn into the world of competitive memory; at the same time, he chronicles the history of great memories and the activities of notable memorizers of the present.

If this sounds boring, rest assured that it is not: the history and interview sections are fascinating. I could have easily read an entire book on the “Talented Tenth” (a group of high-achieving, high-memorizing students at Samuel Gompers Vocational High School in the south Bronx under the aegis of teacher Raemon Matthews), and Foer’s chapter on Daniel Tammet (which has raised controversy—Foer accuses him of not being the savant he claims) had me in the mood to read Tammet’s own book, Born on a Blue Day. Would that these sections were the whole book: although he’s a fine interviewer, Foer is not a good enough writer to make his own adventures in memory particularly compelling. (It would take a truly remarkable writer indeed to make the process of memorizing and recalling the order of a deck of cards as exciting as Foer seems to think it is.)

And then there’s another question: is the memory palace technique useful? Well, I can’t say that I’ve tried it. But I found myself wondering throughout what, if any, real world applications it would have—unless I decided to memorize pi for the hell of it (and I have no interest in doing that, although I had friends in high school who did), I can’t imagine having any use other than occasionally storing phone numbers in my head. And—at the risk of coming off like a bit of a jackass—I have a cell phone for that.

So, in short, Moonwalking with Einstein is half of a really good book and half of a really boring one. Remember that.

(Hi, I'm Seth. Last of the newbies. Be gentle.)

More Classic Dystopia!

2011-12-06T08:49:00.000-08:00

In the real world, you want to avoid dystopia (a society, culture, or environment in which it is extremely unpleasant to live), but in fiction, bring it on! Last month I looked at Ninteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World, the two most famous works in the genre. Today, I'll explore few more contemporary classics.

A Clockwork Orange, written by Anthony Burgess in 1962, takes place in a world driven by violence. Its protagonist is a young gang leader names Alex who nightly sates his desire to commit "ultra-violence" by cruising neighborhoods with his gang hurting people. Eventually he is captured, imprisoned and "reformed" through a process that strips him of virtually all passion. Sent back out onto the street, Alex is now defenseless and becomes, for a time, a victim of the very type of crimes he previously perpetrated.A few notes if you want to try this one out:

It's really really disturbing. Definitely for the more mature reader. The violence is truly ugly, and Alex's nonchalant attitude toward the pain he's inflicting is at times stomach-turning. And though the book is somewhat science-fictiony, the characters who are having this brutality inflicted on them are very much like real people--they're not like zombies or anything--which makes it somewhat worse than your typical violent horror or sci-fi novel.
Burgess invented a kind of slang, called "Nasdat" for his gang members to use. Nasdat includes a lot of Russian and Russian-sounding words. Nasdat sounds cool in a hard-core punk sort of way, but be sure you read one of the editions that includes a Nasdat glossary in the back; without it, nothing will make any sense.
American editions of the book published before 1986 are missing the last chapter (the original U.S. editor didn't like it). Get a later edition or a British edition so you have the book as Burgess intended it. You can decide for yourself whether the last chapter helps or hurts the story.
Later in his life Burgess said that he regretted writing the book because it was so widely misunderstood. Honor his memory and keep in mind that the book is not intended to promote violence.

Oryx and Crake, by Margaret AtwoodNarrated from a post-apocalyptic future by a character who calls himself "Snowman", Oryx and Crake tells the story of how unrestrained genetic manipulation, rampant consumerism and the Internet bring about the end of the world as we know it. Snowman, formerly known as Jimmy, and his friend Crake (an Internet code name for a boy named Glenn) grow up in the midst of corporate genetic experiments which lead to hybrid creatures such as "pigoons," modified pigs developed to grow organs for human transplantation, "rakunks," designer pets with attributes of both raccoons and skunks and "wolvogs," dogs which appear domestic but have the viciousness and feral nature of wolves.Crake grows into a scientific genius who is eventually given free reign within a corporation's experimental wing. He decides the species which most needs to be redesigned is humanity. Jimmy reluctantly assists him and by the time he discovers the true extent of Crake's plan, it is too late.Better than any other novel of the future I've read, Oryx and Crake portrays a world that seems both entirely possible and unimaginably wild. Oryx and Crake is not so upsetting as A Clockwork Orange, but does include some disturbing content. Margaret Atwood also has two other notable dystopian titles to her credit: The Year of the Flood, which occurs in the same future as Oryx and Crake, and The Handmaid's Tale about a future America ruled by religious fundamentalists.

The Road, by Cormac McCarthyThe Road is more post-apocalyptic than dystopian, if such distinctions mean anything. It's a sort of poetic, meditative narrative about a boy and his father attempting to survive in a world after civilization has been destroyed. What remains of humanity are half-starved vagabonds like themselves and various predators ranging from petty criminals to cannibals. Their quest is to simply survive, to go on being the "good guys," and to "carry the fire" for humanity. Their journey is grim and dark and harrowing. While there are parts of the story which seem included for strictly sensational purposes (like the keeping of human livestock) and aspects of our world that seem weirdly missing (there seem to be no brand names on the discarded products the characters find) the book manages to be both haunting and hopeful.

Thank you for helping Ballou!

2011-12-05T12:28:00.000-08:00

We are closing out the Holiday Book Fair for Ballou High School and want to thank everyone for their support. The final tally is 110+ books off the Powells wish list and we are mighty pleased. I will be in touch with Melissa Jackson at Ballou and let everyone know how it all looks from her end but please know how much your books are appreciated and what a big difference this will make in the lives of a lot of teens. Behind the cut, check out what some folks bought.

From Becker in Denver: Scars & Sister Mischief (Take that book banners!)

From Holly in Portland, OR: White Cat by Holly Black (which makes me realize I need to get book #2 up on the list now....)

From Melissa in South TX: Dark Dude by Oscar Hijuelos and A Step From Heaven by An Na (From one end of the world to the other...literally!)

From our pal Jodie in the UK: Shipbreaker, Foundling (1st by DM Cornish), I am Scout and Vanishing Act (Hmm, SFF, NF, Mys - Jodie you are all things to all readers!)

From Jenny in Chicago: Nnedi Okorafor's Akata Witch - one of the most unusual gns any of us have seen in ages.

From Michelle in Missouri: Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders (A new classic joins an old one! Perfect symmetry!)

From Sarah in Minnesota: How to Save a Life, The Scorpio Races and Slam Dunk #01 by Takehiko Inoue (thanks for starting us on a new manga series, Sarah!)

Els in Seattle (Hi Els!!!!): The Freedom Maze, by Delia Sherman and The Teenage Body Book (I just got Delia's book - can't wait to read it!)

Edi bought Deogratias a gn that I heartily recommend to everyone and is truly powerful in the best sense of the word (about Rwanda).

Jennifer in Philadelphia bought Cars on Mars, Watersmeet and The Surrender Tree (Cars on Mars!!! I'm so bummed that the little guys are finally slowing down; what great robots.)

Denise bought Wintergirls, The Chronicles of Harris Burdick, Steve Jobs and Octavian Nothing Vol 2 (So many good ones in here but I must applaud Harris Burdick - it's a wonderful anthology, one of my favorites of the year)

Kimberly from NY State bought Please Ignore Viera Dietz (Has anyone read this and not loved it? I don't think so.)

Our very own Aquafortis (who lives in CA) bought Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and Audrey Wait! (what a weird combination but yea for both!!!)

"Otterb" bought the Foundation trilogy (HUZZAH!!!), The Wee Free Men (TERRY PRATCHETT!), Best Sports Writing of the Year 2010 (on massive sale), I Am the Messenger, Twelve Angry Men (for the classroom) and Rules (also on massive scale!). This is a fabulous box, otterb - Thank you!

Katyroo from Texas: Let It Snow (I was just about to push this one as it is so on sale - excellent!), Carter Beats the Devil, The Contender, War is Boring, Rim Shot, Hoop Queens (out of print! Thanks for grabbing that lovely used copy!), Cooking Up a Storm and The Cartoon Intro to Economics, Vol 1. Katyroo, you rock in a major way - great books!

Miss Sweeney in Bar Harbor, Maine (other side of the country from me!!!) bought Wonderstruck which will likely be fought over by many students, I'm sure. (I mean good book fighting, btw.)

Melanie in Nashville, TN bought 13 Planets (my son is a big fan of that one) and The Essential Stephen Jay Gould which truly is essential reading.

Samantha in the Pacific NW bought Chime and Thirteen Reasons Why (Yea for Chime getting some new readers!)

Sarah in Virginia bought Pyramids (Terry Prachett!!) and Speaking Out! (Thanks to Steve Berman for posting on that one and bringing it to our attention so we could add it to the list.)

Julie in Minnesota bought The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and Dream-Keeper (Langston Hughes was overlooked last spring, so glad to see it head east today).

NG from Canton, Ohio bought Sunrise Over Fallujah, Anna Dressed in Blood and Name of the Star (Can I say how much I loved Anna Dressed in Blood? LOVED IT!)

Erin in DC (Hello Erin!!!) bought Start It Up, Goliath, Always Running and a Groundwood Guide - "Force of Law". (Nice to see business book going to Ballou - here's to teen whiz kids!)

Mindy in Seattle bought This Boy's Life, Animals Make Us Human and RED (Quite a lovely mix of titles and Temple Grandin - awesome.)

Vicki from NYC bought Warriors Don't Cry, Dinomummy (this was on wicked sale - yea!), Black and White, The Souls of Black Folk and The Mysterious Universe (So happy to see these go at the last minute, great books and for a great cause)/

ICO: Castle in the Mist by Miyuki Miyabe

2011-12-05T07:00:00.000-08:00

ICO: Castle in the Mist is a novelization of the PS2 game ICO, a game largely renowned for being a highly abstract, stripped-down platform-puzzle game. The book and game both center around Ico, a child born with horns offered up as a sacrifice to a mysterious, shambling Gothic castle. Once left alone, Ico quickly discovers another captive of the castle, a girl in a cage who does not speak his language, and who is pursued by shadow creatures who emerge from the castle floors and attempt to pull her down into the castle with them. In the game, Ico must then solve a number of puzzles, fend off the shadow creatures and guide the girl—Yorda—by the hand through the labyrinthine castle.

There's a bit of dialogue that explains some basic story—primarily that Yorda is the daughter of the Shadow Queen, the castle's ruler—but the game is largely left open to each player's interpretation of the events. This reliance on interpretive storytelling makes novelization particularly challenging—you're competing with everyone's interpretation, rather than expanding already established story. So I was a little skeptical when I noticed that Haikasoru would be translating ICO: Castle in the Mist—and then I noticed that the novelization was by Miyuki Miyabe, author of the 800-page RPG-as-coming-of-age epic Brave Story. I figured it would be a good book, if not necessarily a particularly good adaptation. Plus LOOK AT THE PRETTY COVER. (yes I know it's just the original game cover, but we didn't get the original game cover here in the US, so there.)*

For the most part, Miyabe does an excellent job bringing the abstract story of the game to the more concrete world of the novel. She does this by retaining only the most basic elements of the game—there are very few places in the story where the game's elements and mechanics feel as though they intruded into Miyabe's original material—and focuses on expanding the world the game takes place in. Miyabe recasts the story into a battle between Good and Evil, and Ico and the previous horned child sacrifices as warriors of the Light God, with Ico finally in a position to make an honest attempt to defeat the Shadow Queen.

More interesting is the background to the castle itself, revealed through Yorda's past. Here, her mother uses the powers she has gained through a pact with the Dark God to gain a measure of control over her imperial neighbors by turning their most powerful warriors to stone after stealing them away through a high-profile tournament of arms held every three years. It's not a particularly elaborate expansion to the game world, but it's definitely interesting, and the story takes a few turns that still felt unexpected even as they matched events in the game.

The only real downside to the novelization (taken as a novelization, anyway) is that Miyabe lost the ethereal, quasi-surreal feeling the game had. Most of this is likely attributable to the process of fleshing out the world ICO takes place in—it's hard for something to feel ethereal when there's concrete information about the world—but even the castle loses something in print.

It's for this reason that ICO: Castle in the Mist almost seems better suited for readers who haven't played ICO, rather than readers who have: those who have played the game are as likely to be interested in the alternative take as put off by an alternative take, whereas readers with no experience with the game will find the novel an interesting and quite different read—especially given the small success that similar Japanese fantasy novels such as Noriko Ogiwara's Dragon Sword and Wind Child and Naoko Uehashi's Moribito have found outside Japan.

* Also, I've just found the 2008 Japanese re-issue cover, and it is also pretty. A different pretty, but still pretty. At least if you are me. I am 95% certain you are not.

Awesome sale books left on the Holiday Book Fair for Ballou

2011-12-01T12:16:00.000-08:00

We are winding down the Holiday Book Fair for Ballou High School at the end of the week and wanted to highlight a few remaining titles - all of which are on sale - that we hope can be considered for last minute purchasing. The fair has gone very well; it's our first foray into the holiday season and we are so grateful to all the folks who have spent a few of their shopping dollars to stock Ballou's library. They need books, lots and lots of books and every little bit that each of you have done is much appreciated. You all rock, seriously. Now please pass the word on these ridiculously cheap books begging to be purchased, (Revolution is Not a Dinner Party for $3.75 - in hardcover!!!), and help us make the fair end with the best possible bang.

Always Running: La Vida Loca Gang Days - $7.98
Animals Make Us Human - $10.98
Best Art You've Never Seen - $15.95
The Big Sea (by Langston Hughes) - $7.98
DC Noir 2 - $7.98
Dragon's Child - $11.29
EONA - $8.98
Inventory (by the AV Club) $8.98
Jack: Secret Histories $6.98
Magical Life of Long Tack Sam $6.98
A Northern Light $4.98 (!!!!!)
Pilgrimage (by Annie Leibovitz - this is $15 off the cover price) $35
A Place to Stand (by Jimmy Baca) $7.98
Red $6.98
Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party $3.75 (there are 2 separate sale prices - grab this one!)

The Salt Eaters $5.98
Secret History of Moscow $7.98
This Boy's Life $7.98
Three Across $12.50
When Fish Got Feet.... $9.95

The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler

2011-12-01T08:57:00.001-08:00

The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler
"It's 1996, and Josh and Emma have been neighbors their whole lives. They've been best friends almost as long - at least, up until last November, when Josh did something that changed everything. Things have been weird between them ever since, but when Josh's family gets a free AOL CD in the mail,his mom makes him bring it over so that Emma can install it on her new computer. When they sign on, they're automatically logged onto their Facebook pages. But Facebook hasn't been invented yet. And they're looking at themselves fifteen years in the future.

By refreshing their pages, they learn that making different decisions now will affect the outcome of their lives later. And as they grapple with the ups and downs of what their futures hold, they're forced to confront what they're doing right - and wrong - in the present."- summary from Amazon

You have no idea how much I loved this book. The 90s nostalgia alone is just amazing, but factor in the whole Facebook aspect, an awkward friendship, and a dual narrative and you have made me one happy blogger.

Reading Emma and Josh's story was such a quick, compelling read; it was so hard to put down. The dual narrative really helps and it was interesting to see both sides, especially when the friendship was strained and awkward because it really gave the reader a good sense of what's going on in both of their heads. Both characters go through a fantastic journey and are clearly changed for the better by the end of it.

Going back to the 90s nostalgia, I just loved it- the Macarena, watching Friends and Seinfeld when they were new, not knowing Ellen DeGeneres was gay (by the way, her 90s sitcom was hilarious- you should all check it out), and so many other things. The authors make it so that even if you weren't very aware of the late 90s, you can still understand the references in a way based on the context. I will say there was a funny part for me when I was reading and I forgot it took place in 1996. Emma was in her car and said it didn't have a CD player but she had found a cassette tape of a Green Day album to play. I was like “How did you find a cassette tape nowadays?!” and then I remembered it was 1996 and not current day. Also, interesting fact I found out on Pop Up Video- the phrase “cassette tape” has actually been removed from the dictionary.

Overall, just a fantastic book and a wonderful collaboration between Asher and Mackler. I highly recommend this book to everyone.

FTC: Received ARC from publisher.

First Day on Earth by Cecil Castellucci

2011-11-30T05:00:00.000-08:00

A startling, wonderful novel about the true meaning of being an alien in an equally alien world.

"We are specks. Pieces of dust in this universe. Big nothings.

"I know what I am."

Mal lives on the fringes of high school. Angry. Misunderstood. Yet loving the world -- or, at least, an idea of the world.

Then he meets Hooper. Who says he's from another planet. And may be going home very soon.

I picked this book up on a whim. It seemed so small and I wanted to feel a sense of accomplishment that only a small read can bring.

I found myself pouring over the words, slowing down, even rereading sections where I thought the prose was most beautiful. This very small read packed a huge punch.

Mal wants to believe there is more to this world than what humans think is possible. Scratch that, Mal already knows there is much more than anyone knows. Mal has been abducted by aliens and that was the very best moment of his life. At seventeen he already knows that life is full of extreme disappointments. He would like to go seek out the aliens that had taken him, to travel the stars and leave Earth far behind in his galactic rear view mirror, but he can't. His mother needs him, she can't function without him.

He spends his days being bullied at school. Then he comes home to a drunk mother who is probably already passed out in her own vomit. He will clean her up, go to the grocery store. He will make her dinner and see that she eats. He will listen to the town gossips when they say she used to be lovely, and even though she was beautiful she just couldn't hang on to that husband of hers. He will hear them say she is crazy.

Mal hangs out at a local support group for people who have been abducted. It is at one of these meetings that he meets Hooper. Spending time with Hooper makes Mal feel validated in his alien theories. When he finds out that Hooper is an alien and wants to leave the planet Mal does everything in his power to make Hooper take him on the journey of a lifetime.

Castellucci pulls no punches with the writing. The story is sparsely narrated and full of raw emotion. Mal is completely unreliable and the reader is unsure if aliens do actually exist or if they exist only for Mal as a coping mechanism. I highly recommend reading this small gut punchy novel, and I hope to read more from Castellucci in the future.

Every You, Every Me by David Levithan with photographs by Jonathan Farmer

2011-11-29T07:00:00.000-08:00

Evan's best friend is Ariel.
Evan's only friend is Ariel.
Ariel is gone.

But what happened to Ariel? And who is sending photographs of Ariel (and other people, initially unidentified) to Evan?

David Levithan's novel Every You, Every Me incorporates photographs by Jonathan Farmer. While Evan scrutinizes each and every picture and note he receives, it is worth remembering the tagline on the cover of the book: "A picture is worth a thousand lies." Readers have more than one mystery to figure out here. Evan's first-person narration is mostly directed to Ariel, addressing her from the get-go, using "you" frequently and really pulling you into his story and in his thoughts - but do you think he's a reliable narrator, and do you think he had something to do with Ariel's departure? Your opinion may change from chapter to chapter as more backstory is detailed, and it may change again when the truth is finally revealed in the final chapter.

Kudos, David Levithan, for incorporating Zeno's dichotomy paradox into your story. Thank you.

My favorite Farmer photo in this book appears on page 228 - but don't you dare turn to that page until you've read pages 1 through 227. It won't mean as much if you look ahead.

If you like Every You, Every Me, you should also read As Simple As Snow by Gregory Gallaway, which I've talked about here at GuysLitWire as well as at my own book blog, Bildungsroman. Snow also employs a teenaged male narrator, a missing-in-action vivacious female friend, and mysterious elements.

The Works: Anatomy of a City by Kate Ascher

2011-11-28T00:41:00.000-08:00

I happened to read the November issue of Wired while searching for a book to write about for a recent blogger celebration of city books. I wanted to write about YA nonfiction, but outside of Genius of Common Sense: Jane Jacobs and the Story of The Death and Life of Great American Cities (which I do want to read in the near future, but I haven't been in the mood for biographies lately), nothing caught my attention. Until Wired ran a brief excerpt from Kate Ascher's The Heights: Anatomy of a Skyscraper and mentioned that Ascher had previously written a book about cities.

That earlier book is The Works: Anatomy of a City. Okay, so it's not a YA book like I originally wanted, but it does have YA appeal. This is largely due to the book's format, which mixes short text blocks to introduce subjects, and devoting most of the page to infographics.

(Sadly, Penguin doesn't have any excerpts available on their website. I have no idea why not, because what better way to sell the book? In any case, you can get a feel for what the interior looks like from the book designers here [click to pages 2 and 3, but the images are tiny], and there are some larger views here that you can actually read.)

Despite the subtitle, which may lead you to believe it's about cities in general or uses an imaginary city as in some of David Macaulay’s books, Ascher's focus is on illuminating the most important aspects of New York City's infrastructure. (In fact, Ascher writes that she had "the idea of doing a David Macaulay (author of the terrific book The Way Things Work)-like book about the way New York City’s infrastructure works.") Still, even if you don't live in New York City, there is much that applies to other cities. Ascher dissects streets, the subway, rail freight, water and sewage systems, cell phone service, and much more. Want to know how bridges and tunnels are cleaned? How electricity is transmitted? Or how FedEx transports packages? It's all in The Works.

While the writing sometimes has a textbook-like feel, the infographics enhance and expand readers' understanding of the subjects that are covered. Despite the variety of subjects The Works explores, cities are such a broad topic that many other aspects of city life are not mentioned at all. As for backmatter, there are no source notes, bibliography, or suggested reading sections, but the index is pretty substantial. Still this is an often fascinating book—and one that's great for browsing—about subjects that I didn't know much about and/or hadn't spent much time thinking about.

Book source: public library.

Originally published at The YA YA YAs.

Wildwood by Colin Meloy

2011-11-25T03:58:00.000-08:00

How five crows managed to lift a twenty-pound baby boy into the air was beyond Prue, but that was certainly the least of her worries.

So begins Colin Meloy’s new novel Wildwood, in which a girl named Prue must journey into the Impassable Wilderness, outside her hometown of Portland, Oregon, in order to retrieve her brother--with an awkward classmate named Curtis tagging along. Due to some misfortune involving coyotes donning military uniforms, the two must separately navigate this strange world where talking animals uneasily coexist with humans who have never met anyone from the outside world. A revolution is about to happen, and Prue and Curtis quickly find themselves on opposite sides.

Meloy pulls influences from centuries of children’s literature, both thematically and in direct references. At one point Prue refers to Nancy Drew as the patron saint of sleuthing, and Curtis’ infatuation with the elegant, power-hungry Dowager Governess is comparable to Edmund and the White Witch in C.S. Lewis’ famous series.

Curtis joins the coyote army and helps them fight a groups of bandits for the Governess...until he finds that she is the one hiding Prue's baby brother. It is not pretty what she intends to use the infant for. Meanwhile, Prue is on the run. Owl Rex, leader of most of the birds in the Impassable Wilderness (crows obviously excluded), tells her that she is in great danger.

The novel is definitely a reward for those who have already devoured many books rather than an entry-level choice for a new fan of reading. Meloy’s language is challenging, much in the way that Lemony Snicket would drop a few ten-dollar words here and there to build a reader's vocabulary. This allows Meloy to create a descriptive, lush fantasy world that one can almost reach out and touch.

Prue and Curtis still talk like regular twelve-year-olds, but it is rather electrifying to read a children’s book that has sentences like “The foyer was a cauldron of frenzied activity.” Meloy fronts the equally literary rock outfit The Decemberists, where his devout interest in polysyllabic words have been brewing for over a decade.

The illustrations from Carson Ellis, with their bold lines and gentle tones, are lovely. Though mostly in black and white, a few of the drawings are presented on glossy paper as color plates. Ellis has designed album covers for the Decemberists, as well as illustrated The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart.

People looking for something wholly original may be slightly disappointed to see how much Wildwood owes to other stories. Well-versed fans of fantasy and children’s literature will find the adventure as cozy as a cup of tea next to a roaring fireplace.

Machine Man by Max Barry

2011-11-21T01:01:00.000-08:00

Australian novelist Max Barry has a keen sense of what humanity is experiencing and moving towards. His topics have ranged from marketing (Syrup) to modern office culture (Company) to a future where corporations are in control and run the government (Jennifer Government). Machine Man began as an online project, where Barry wrote one page of his book a day. It was then expanded and published as his fourth novel.

Charles Neumann is a scientist that loses a leg in an accident at work. While coping with the shock of losing a limb and learning to walk on a crude prosthetic leg, Charles realizes this is an opportunity to start improving himself.

Machine Man opens with Charles' thoughts on wanting to be a machine,

“AS A BOY, I WANTED TO BE A TRAIN. I DIDN’T REALIZE THIS WAS unusual— that other kids played with trains, not as them.
They liked to build tracks and have trains not fall off them. Watch them go through tunnels. I didn’t understand that. What I liked was pretending my body was two hundred tons of unstoppable steel. Imagining I was pistons and valves and hydraulic compressors. “You mean robots,” said my best friend, Jeremy. “You want to play robots.” I had never thought of it like that.
Robots had square eyes and jerky limbs and usually wanted to destroy the Earth. Instead of doing one thing right, they did everything badly. They were general purpose. I was not a fan of robots. They were bad machines.”

Charles meets prosthetist Lola Shanks who loves her job a little too much. The two click, but are soon caught up in the company that wants Charles to create better products for them and experiment on himself. Barry pushes the limits of his characters and readers begin to wonder how far Charles will go and how many products he will use on himself.

Machine Man is a darkly humorous tale that melds fantastic sounding technologies with our modern world. Barry uses some of his past themes of out of control corporations, how people become to feel like cogs in a machine and our constant nervousness of the future. Some of the action scenes are a bit over the top and are maybe unnecessary, but they don't detract from this interesting and wonderful novel.

Fans of dystopian novels, The Unidentified by Rae Mariz and anything by Cory Doctorow will enjoy Machine Man.

The Once and Future King by T. H. White

2011-11-18T02:00:00.000-08:00

One of the classics of Arthurian fiction is T.H. White's The Once and Future King. I spent, probably, a couple of years or more greedily reading just about any Arthurian Fiction I could find. I read T.H. White's The Once and Future King maybe around 15 years ago - it's been quite awhile. I remember enjoying it. I'm still a fan of Arthurian fiction, but I haven't read any in some time. The Once and Future King, I read when I was on that binge: fiction and non-fiction Arthurian material alike.

The Once and Future King is a book about King Arthur’s life. He starts out as a young boy who doesn’t know he’s destined to be king of England. He’s tutored by a wizard named Merlin, who seems to be living backwards from old age to young and seems to have knowledge of the future. Merlin teaches Arthur how to be a good king by changing him into different kinds of creatures to teach him lessons about life. There’s a magical sword that’s been stabbed into a stone, along with a prophecy that whoever can pull the sword from the stone will be King of England. Once Arthur is old enough to be a squire, somehow he ends up pulling the sword from the stone. There begins his trials as new king trying to unite the lesser kingdoms under one rule. He creates an order of knights that serve him in order to help unite the kingdoms. One of his trusted knights betrays him. There’s ongoing trouble with another clan. And the book follows through to Arthur’s ultimate demise.

T.H. White's book appealed to me because I had heard the Disney movie The Sword and The Stone was based on it, but obviously the movie was aimed at young children and the book wasn't really. In fact, the book goes well beyond where the Disney flick ends. We get to watch Wart grow into the true king, we meet Guinevere and Lancelot, and the other knights, we meet the hilarious King Pellinore and his life-long chase after the questing beast, "hello, what?" There’s much more Arthurian lore within the pages of this novel. I’d say it falls just after Le Morte de Artur on the list of must-read King Arthur fiction.

Ace and Roc Books recently republished The Once and Future King in a trade paperback Collector's Edition. Their news release says the Broadway production Camelot was based on this book - I didn't know that (I kinda want to see it now). The book club podcast The Sword and Laser read The Once and Future King as one of their club pics recently too. They had much discussion of the book on the podcast and on their Goodreads forums.

I remember The Once and Future King being fun, although definitely not an accurate historical representation of Arthur and his post-Roman life, or even medieval life if placed in that context. The anachronisms don't affect the telling of the story at all. Really, they just add to the character of the book. It was more than just fun though. The book took us into the politics, into the lives of the characters.

Ace and Roc also republished The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle, in a tpb Collector's Edition. The Last Unicorn is about a unicorn fearing she's the last of her kind and sets out to learn the truth. Helping her on her quest are a magician, a traveler, and an evil king. I've never read that, but I've heard it's good, and I should hunt down a copy and give it a read.

I was a fan of collecting books when I was in high-school and college. I had shelves filled with hard backs and paperbacks, and a few very special trade paperbacks. If you're a fan of special collector's editions, or need to replace the aged, worn out, well-read copies you already own, look these up. If I had room in my tiny house, I would!

Sparkplug Comics and the legacy of Dylan WIlliams

2011-11-17T10:00:00.000-08:00

Recently, the comics community lost one of its greats. If you never heard of Dylan Williams, its because we live in a golden age for comics. I know that doesn't make a whole lot of sense on the face of it, but there are so many graphic novels coming out these days from so many different publishers that it's hard to see the impact of a small, DIY publisher like Sparkplug.

Yet every book and comic from this small press is an expression of the love Dylan had for the medium. Recently I had a chance to pick up some of Sparkplug Comics books, and I'd like to recommend a few of their best. If you've never seen a minicomic, you're in for a treat...

I met Dylan only once, at the 2002 SPX show in Bethesda, MD. It was my one and only time to make it to that cornerstone of the comics small press, and I was excited and greedy, By the time I got to his table, I had to choose between the Orchid anthology or dinner. I chose the anthology. It's a collection of horror material from lots of great cartoonists, including T Edward Bak, a friend of mine. I was so glad Dylan took a chance on Bak, and in talking to him about all the cartoonists in the anthology, I could see that Bak was lucky such an enthusiastic, generous, and discerning publisher took an interest in his work.

They followed that up with the oversized Service Industry book, a gorgeous reproduction of strips that he had run in the Athens, GA alt weekly paper Flagpole. This is autobiographical, as long as your understanding of that word can include giant robots. It's great, and I'll explain why by starting with Bak's weaknesses: his writing is sometimes turgid and overly florid, but his art-- he's doing stuff on the page, suggesting whole little worlds with his almost hieroglyphic structures, roughed out symbol systems like a mad-genius, 8 year old Norse god of cartooning. When I read a Bak comic, it's like I can feel the neurons firing in my brain.

Over the years, I followed what Dylan was publishing, the cartoonists he had his eye on. He pointed me to great new talent, publishing collections of exciting work by artists like Chris Wright, people you would have only seen in bits and pieces here and there but you knew you wanted more from.

Or he published work by established mini comics greats like Dave Kiersh, a cartoonist who has spent his career working at the same themes of teenage alienation and desire in all these pocket-sized, DIY comics that you'd find all over the place: record stores, magazines, comics shows, passed on from friends. Dylan gave cartoonists like Kiersh a platform to do larger scale work that emerges from where they are and avoids the messy struggles that come from dealing with a larger publisher.

I just recently read Passage, the comic album from Tessa Brunton. Tessa is great; go right now and read some of her webcomics on her blog Suck It, Mussolini! Passage, though, is a whole step beyond. Passage is one long sustained story about Tessa and her brother wrestling with awkward parents who make them even more self-conscious about being teenagers than you can possibly imagine.

This book is gorgeous, a well-crafted comic that you love to look at and hold in your hand, and really speaks to how print can make you want to buy writing and art, even if it's like is free online. Dylan's ability to nurture a project and bring it to fruition as a publisher really shines here.

Go check out what Sparkplug has to offer. Dylan died young-- he was only 39. His widow Emily Nilsson, cartoonist Tom Neely, and Sparkplug employee Virginia Paine are struggling to keep Sparkplug, and Dylan's vision, alive. There's lots of great stuff there that will surprise you if you've never looked at comics that are, for me, the purest expression of personal art out around.

We are Going Back to Ballou for a Holiday Book Fair!!

2011-11-16T01:13:00.000-08:00

For all of you who recall the story of Ballou High School in Washington DC from earlier this year, we are delighted to announce that GLW is partnering up again with school librarian Melissa Jackson to get some more books to Ballou. While the year began with less than one book for each student in the Ballou library (the American Library Association advises a minimum of eleven books per student), after our successful spring book fair and the publicity that surrounded it and Melissa's own efforts, Ballou now has four books for each student which is a huge improvement. But, improving is not enough, we want to hit and then exceed the ALA minimum and so we are going to shamelessly take advantage of everyone's holiday joy and gift-giving mood this time of year and hopefully add to the stacks at Ballou with this smaller, but no less enjoyable book fair.

And yes, we will be back in the spring with another big fair for the school again.

One thing we want to stress is that this list is put together with Melissa's input and is comprised of books that Ballou wants and needs. That is part of why we put these book fairs together - we want to gift a school with books they have chosen, not the books we want to give away. It's not cheap and it's not easy, but it's a good thing to do and we hope that you will help us make it happen for Ballou.

Here is the direct link to the wish list at Powells. (And if you want to share it: http://bit.ly/GLWBookFair.) As you all know, we work with Powells because it is a bricks and mortar independent store that is a big part of the city of Portland and we here at GLW like to support bricks and mortar stores at every opportunity. This means there are a few more hoops to jump through when it comes to ordering books but we hope you understand how worthy our cause is both for the school and the store.

It is perfectly fine to purchase used copies of a book (more bang for your buck) but please check and make sure the book is in “standard” used condition and not “student owned” (you will have to click on the title and leave the wish list to check this). The “student owned” copies are very cheap for a reason - they are written in and thus not a good choice for this effort. Also, if at all possible please purchase hardcover copies as they will hold up better and be on the lookout for "SALE" prices as a bunch of the books are on sale this year and quite reasonable.

Once you have made your selections head to “checkout” and you will be prompted to inform Powells if the books were indeed bought from the wishlist. This lets the store know to mark them as “purchased” on the list. After that you need to provide your credit card info and also fill in the shipping address. Here is where the books are going to:

Melissa Jackson, LIBRARIAN
Ballou Senior High School
3401 Fourth Street SE
Washington DC 20032
(202) 645-3400

It’s very important that you get Melissa’s name and title in there - she is not the only Jackson (or Melissa) at the school and we want to make sure the books get to the library.

After all that you buy the books and you’re done! Please head back over here when you get a chance though and leave a comment letting us know who you are, where you’re from and what you bought. Starting tomorrow I will have a continuously updated post listing everyone’s purchases so we can see the books flying their way to our nation’s capitol. I’ll be in constant touch with Melissa too so I can let you all know how things go on her end. The book fair will run through cyber Monday on November 28th and we'll keep you updated on things even after it shuts down. (Hopefully as a sellout.)

And follow us on twitter (@guyslitwire) for updates as well!

Speaking Out

2011-11-15T20:00:00.000-08:00

Friend of Guys' Lit Wire, Steve Berman, has compiled a new book, Speaking Out: LGBTQ Youth Stand Up, and he wants your help getting it into school libraries.

The anthology, partially inspired by Dan Savage's It Gets Better Campaign, features stories about gay and transgender teens overcoming intolerance and homophobia. As the back cover says, "Queer teens need tales of what might happen next in their lives, and editor Steve Berman showcases a diversity of events, challenges, and, especially, triumphs."

And now, Berman is working to get this important book in schools, trying to raise $2000 by the end of the years, which will allow him to donate copies to 200 school libraries. (You can also nominate a school to receive a copy of Speaking Out.) The fundraising campaign started with a bang, raising $500 in the first week. It's leveled off some since then, and it could use your help. A ten or twenty dollar donation may not seem like much, especially given the amount of cruelty and hate gay teens face everyday. But Guys; Lit Wire is built on the belief that the right book, reaching the right person at the right time, can change a life. Steve Berman and the contributors of Speaking Out are carrying that idea to the next level.

The Other Kind of Dystopia

2011-11-15T09:28:00.000-08:00

It's my contention that you can't read too much dystopian literature. The world, after all, is going to go down the tubes eventually--it may already be circling the drain--and the more you read about that happening, the better prepared you'll be when it does.

There are lots of ways for the world to turn to doo-doo. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in which a totalitarian state takes control of everything and rules with an iron fist--surveilling all citizens, and abducting and torturing all dissenters. Fear is one way to control a population. But there are others. In Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, another dystopian classic, for instance, pleasure is used readily to control the population. The citizenry of Brave New World is fed drugs to keep them happy and ignorant, encouraged to be as sexually promiscuous as possible and is distracted from questioning the status quo by endless entertainment, games and sports. Science and technology are applied to every aspect of human life. Babies are gestated in factories and both their genes and their development environment are strictly controlled. Children are educated in a similar factory-like setting. Distinct classes, or castes, are created by a combination of genetic engineering and brainwashing. But the state in A Brave New World claims a higher purpose. While in Nineteen Eighty-Four the totalitarian Party sought only to maximize its own power, the World State in Brave New World at least pretends that it's out to eliminate suffering for its people, even if that comes at the cost of also eliminating freedom, love and passion. A number of characters in Brave New World don't find the combination of lots of sex, heavy doses of drugs and ample entertainment options as fulfilling as the World State would expect and their struggles with finding something deeper drive the plot of the book.

Commentators have found reasons to compare Brave New World with Nineteen Eighty-Four and most have concluded that Brave New World more accurately predicted what the twentieth century would ultimately bring. After all, we worship technology, we have all our entertainments, our 3-D movies, our immersive video games, our passion-inducing sports. We promote a kind of sexual promiscuity among our youth (at least according to a lot of reality TV) and we dull our dissatisfaction with our lives and work by taking anti-depressant and anti-anxiety drugs. If you believe the hype, our consumerism has reached such a level that for many the release of the next iPhone is a major reason to keep on living. It's true that we don't have a class system that is as strictly enforced as the one Huxley describes (or we have at least convinced ourselves of that) and most of us still hold onto many of the ideals missing from the World State: love, commitment, family. How threatened are these things by the infantile desires our culture so prominently displays? Is our entertainment culture just a way of distracting us from realizing that our lives have no meaning?

Brave New World is a weird book, at times funny, at times disturbing and at times almost impossible to follow. It gets into all kinds of philosophical and religious argument so if you tackle it, be prepared. But if you do give it a try, when you're done, look around you. Do you see the Huxleyan dystopia, a world full of doped up people out to substitute true fulfillment with rampant consumption? Or is there still enough deeper feeling out there to convince you it's not all completely mucked up, at least not yet?

A Monster Calls

2011-11-14T07:13:00.000-08:00

In days gone by, unknown parts of the world were marked on maps with the designation "Here Be Monsters." Now we have mapped the world, but when it comes to dealing with grief, loss, and guilt, there still "be" monsters in our minds. With A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness has given us the terrible beauty of a timeless parable.

Ness (author of the transcendent Chaos Walking trilogy) wrote A Monster Calls based on a story idea by Irish author Siobhan Dowd, who succumbed to breast cancer before she was able to turn the idea into a full-fledged book. He is aided in this by the gorgeous illustrations of Jim Kay.

Conor, thirteen, is visited by an ancient monster, one who insists he has been summoned by Conor. A monster? “Monsters were for babies. Monsters were for bedwetters.” A dream, probably. A nightmare, surely. But the monster calls again, insistently, a remnant of the wild earth, interrupting the silence that envelops Conor’s life—the other monsters everyone sees and no one wants to talk about. An unapproachable grandmother, an absentee father, bullies at school, a dying mother. And silence is precisely what the monster will not allow. He demands Conor hear three tales, and then demands that Conor tell his own tale, one whose brutal truth Conor cannot even admit to himself.

The tales the monster provides for Conor illustrate the complicated nature of goodness, and push us toward an ending that is unsparing in its inevitability. Ness provides a depth of sentiment I have rarely encountered in a book meant for teens, and manages to entirely avoid mawkishness. I am comfortable admitting that I cried (cried for Conor, cried for his mother, cried for my own father and his battle with cancer) through most of the final seventy pages. And if you read this book and do not cry, then I do not want to know you.

Ness gives us permission to feel what everyone dealing with grief needs to feel: sadness, of course, but also anger. As Conor’s mother tells him, “And if you need to break things, then by God you break them good and hard.” Too often we deny the anger that accompanies grief, and no one needs to hear that being angry is acceptable more than young men (or boys, for let’s be honest, we all become children again when dealing with grief). Hemingway told us how “(T)he world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.” A Monster Calls broke me, and I hope it breaks you too, so that you, like me, and like Conor, can become stronger in the broken places.

Snuff by Terry Pratchett

2011-11-12T10:23:00.000-08:00

There are, for the boy learning what it means to be a man, two shining examples to be found in Western literature: Hector of Troy and Sam Vimes. This is a bold claim, considering that a) I am a lady and b) I'm a newbie at Guys Lit Wire (hellooo!), but hear me out.

Hector is possibly the paragon of ideal Western Man: father and husband, diplomat and warrior. He defends his home and his snotty brother Paris (who I would have cheerfully handed over to Menelaus, but I digress), even though this leads to a grim and glorious death. Not an easy example to live up to, but being a man isn't easy, and being perfect is impossible.

Which brings me to Sam Vimes, Commander of the Watch of Ankh-Morpork and protagonist of Sir Terry Pratchett's latest Discworld novel Snuff. Sam is just a copper, through and through, a good man working in a world that is at best bloody complicated and at worst deadly and cruel. In Snuff, Sam's wife Sybil has insisted he take a holiday, and they head off into the countryside to Sybil's ancestral home Crundells. The holiday begins well enough, as Sam gets to know the countryside, taking Young Sam, his six year old son, out for fresh air and edifying nature activities, like studying animal poo (no, really). But something stinks in the country, beyond the poo, and soon enough, Sam has a murder on his hands. I'll leave the plot summary here. Suffice it to say, murder is only the start, and once again Sam finds himself attempting to obey that most demanding of mistresses, the Law (and also keep his wife happy).

I've you've never read a Discworld book, friend, you are in for a treat. Pratchett is one of the most gifted storytellers around. To some, stories of the Discworld are mere fantasy, fun genre fiction to read on a holiday and forget when you return. Those people are missing out. Yes, Discworld books are really fun, often side-splittingly funny -- Pratchett is an inveterate punster. They plots are quick and entertaining. But within the jokes and within the action, Pratchett's story often comment on some aspect of modern life, gently prodding readers to take a closer look at big issues like undocumented workers and exploitative business practices (Snuff), war (Jingo), pop culture (Moving Pictures, Soul Music and others), education (Equal Rites) soccer (Unseen Academicals) and commerce (Making Money). The stories aren't preachy -- Pratchett will always make a poo joke when the opportunity presents itself -- but they are complex, moving, funny and above all, they are fantastic.

My favorite characters are Commander Vimes and the City Watch, with young witch Tiffany Aching a close second (start with The Wee Free Men, which includes a hilarious send-up of Braveheart). There are currently 39 Discworld books, beginning with The Colour of Magic, but feel free to start anywhere. I started with Jingo, a meditation on war that is sadly pertinent today (although the book is really funny). Sick of Twilight and its ilk? Read Carpe Jugulum. But do yourself a favor, really, and read them all.

Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?

2011-11-11T11:16:00.000-08:00

"Aw, dig it, Pete! Does a tiger wear a necktie?""No, but it isn’t in the nature of a…"

With this question, Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie?, Don Petersen prompts the exploration that guides his 1962 play about a group of young addicts placed in a rehabilitation center. With addiction standing in for the scope of circumstances, behaviors, and modes of thinking in which one can become stuck, Petersen uses his characters to reflect on the conflict in one’s nature between immutability and the possibility of change - predestination against agency.

Petersen’s drama plays out primarily in the relationship of the addict Bickham and his teacher, Winters. Winters’s wariness toward his students is won out by a sympathy for their tough lives that have led them along the path to addiction. Contrasted with the institution’s other authority figures, he is the only one willing to place some degree of hope in his charges. Bickham, a role that won Al Pacino a Tony award, meanwhile is a young man beginning to see his future ever darkening, seeking desperately to believe himself in the hope Winters extends.

The dynamic is refracted through two of the other residents, Conrad and Linda. Conrad, in love with Linda, knows how little chance change really has, but refuses to doubt that he just might make it. Linda, burned by life and cynically resisting the thought that she has agency, much less could be loved, is slowly changed by the vision offered by Conrad’s optimism.

The play suffers from an overabundance of un-nuanced 1960s sociological psychoanalysis - absent fathers equal addiction like an equation - but Petersen’s vivid realization of his characters is compelling enough to overcome this fault.

A Coney Island of the Mind with CD, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

2011-11-10T00:01:00.000-08:00

Poetry became better for me when I stopped having it as assigned reading. And when I'm not feeling self-conscious, and I read it out loud, then I'm doing it right.

You don't have to get the book-CD version of A Coney Island of the Mind. But hearing Ferlinghetti read these will be a treat. Here's one:

Christ Climbed Down
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti

CHRIST climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagon sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
with German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody's imagined Christ child
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees
Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest
of Second Comings

Powells.com has a brief bio of Lawrence Ferlinghetti(b. 1919): (He) won the first National Book Award Literarian Medal (2005). Their citation reads: "Through his publishing and bookselling at City Lights Books in San Francisco, his inspiration of the Beats, his steady publication and coverage of poets both classic and avant-garde, Ferlinghetti has been a major force and an inspiration in the literary world. He has always pushed the edges of the literary envelope and has been unwavering in his commitment to literature." Ferlinghetti has also received a lifetime achievement award from the Author's Guild, the Frost Medal of the Poetry Society of America, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Hark! A Vagrant (+ bonus review: a vulgar dictionary!)

2011-11-09T04:10:00.000-08:00

I think that if my sixteen-year-old self could have transported into the future of now and been exposed to Hark! A Vagrant he would probably crush pretty hard on Kate Beaton. There's a trifecta of humor, history, and smarts in her collection of web comics that would have knocked me over with a feather and tickled me into a giddy fanboy state. Not that any of this is wasted on the adult me, I've just grown better at keeping my fanboy crushing at bay. Mostly.

Armed with a college degree in history, and the righteousness to ask the tough modern questions, Beaton skewers events and people from the past, primarily from the 18th and 19th centuries. Military heroes, musicians, authors, politicians, and characters from literature all end up on the barbed end of her devilish cartoon pitchfork. Perhaps what makes these comics funny is that across the board they tend to talk a lot like modern young adults. Occasionally obscene, often snarky and irreverent, I not only would have eaten this up with a spork as a teen, I might have actually paid more attention in history in literature classes if I'd actually realized how fun it could all be. I did, after all, make a home movie when I was a teen that showed Beethoven riding a bike in Los Angeles, eating a falafel, and buying one of his symphonies at Tower Records.

I also think this collection speaks to what I find most depressing about modern comic strip artists who still appear in newsprint, that most of what passes for comics today are lame, safe, and simply lacking anything below the surface of tired one-liners. If someone wanted (I'm sure someone, somewhere already has) I bet they could blame the downfall of print news media on the comics that used to be the one sure draw a newspaper had at bringing up younger readers. But while I digress, my point is that the comics in Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant made me laugh out loud the way I once did. And about stuff like Nancy Drew acting somewhat clueless, Shakespearean characters pointing out their own ridiculous circumstances, and proper Victorian ladies with potty mouth.

click to embiggen

Beaton's drawing style is loose and unstudied though very assured, which is part of its charm. At times I am reminded of the early cartoon work of Arnold Roth. The facial expressions are simple but easily understandable, sometimes the entire humor rests on the eyes of a character. Dealing with historical figures and an ever changing cast of characters may make the enterprise more difficult than most strip artists who need to master only a handful of characters and expressions, but the rewards in the end are that much greater for the reader.

A three-page spread of Canadian Stereotype Comics is followed by a visit with St. Francis which in no way serves as a segue way for the story about The Nautilus being attacked by a giant squid. Actually, while the Nautilus crew is dealing with the squid – a squid who merely seems to want to make friends – Beaton includes a footnote on the page about how the text of the original story indicates the sub was attacked by an octopus despite its squid-like description. The comic and the footnote, as well as Beaton's scholarship, work off each other in a way that add another layer of humor. The footnotes throughout serve as a sort of postscript to the comics that skirt the edge of an artist who perhaps feels a little guilty for using their college degree for something so frivolous. A little like the smart, funny girl who can insult buffoons at a party and get them to laugh without them realizing that she's making fun of them, only here the buffoons are the people and characters of history. In the end everyone comes out laughing.

So while catching the Bronte sisters dude-watching or laughing at a mashup between Les Miserables and The X Files I still have one small, teensie-weensie little quibble, something I wish Beaton could do a little bit more with, and that's the language. Specifically, I would love to see her work in more historical slang and insults because I think that would lend itself well to what she is doing here. Which leads me to my bonus review of...

The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence as compiled by a Captain Grose.

Teens love slang. Heck, I love slang. People who work retail get a kick out of it when they ask me how I'm doing and I say "Everything's Jake!" or "I'm swell, thanks." And that's just 1950s stuff. So just imagine what teens could do pouring over 200-year-old slang and resurrecting it for modern use. That friend of theirs who's always borrowing money or asking for parts of their lunch, instead of calling them a mooch or a bum they could call them a mung. Tired of calling someone ignorant or stupid, try looby. Couple a dictionary like this with a copy of A Clockwork Orange and see what happens. In all seriousness, this would be one dictionary teens would sit down and read for fun.

Though out-of-print the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue is still available in used form. My copy came from a local bookstore's reference section, but its for sale on line and I've seen it in other places when I wasn't looking for it. If she doesn't own it already I think Kate Beaton would enjoy it, and if she doesn't own it I would be glad to exchange my copy for, oh, say an original cartoon drawing. (That didn't sound too fanboyish, did it?).

Hark! A Vagrant
by Kate Beaton
Drawn & Quarterly 2011

and more comics online at
Hark! A Vagrant

The 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit and Pickpocket Eloquence
as compiled by a Captain Grose

Toradora! volumes 1-3

2011-11-07T07:00:00.000-08:00

Ryuuji Takasu has a huge crush on one of his classmates, Minori Kushieda, but hasn't been able to work up the nerve to talk to her, partly because everyone assumes he's a delinquent due to his shifty-looking eyes. It doesn't help that her best friend is Taiga Aisaka, known as the "Palmtop Tiger" for her short stature and hot temper. And it really doesn't help when he catches Taiga accidentally slipping a love letter to his best friend, Yuusaku Kitamura, into his bag. And it really really doesn't help when Taiga breaks into his house at 3AM to violently reclaim her letter.

Fortunately for all involved, this doesn't end in bloodshed but rather an uneasy truce, best described as "Ryuuji will now do anything Taiga asks him to, and in return might get to spend some supervised time with Minori". And so begins the quest to hook up Taiga and Kitamura, a task which leaves most of the school wondering what fresh terrors are in store now that the two most irrationally feared students suddenly appear to be dating.

This is just the setup premise for Toradora!; to try to explain the twists and turns both comedic and serious taken since then would rob you of the pleasure of watching them dynamically evolve through the first three volumes.

Our two protagonists are so destined to end up in a relationship that even their respective love interests comment on how great a couple they make. So it's fortunate that, individually, they're immensely likable and devoid of that artificiality that comes from the too archetypal character. Ryuuji is a paragon of domestic masculinity: his mother's entirely too flighty to properly take care of him, which has left him armed with formidable cooking skills and an obsession with cleanliness that borders on pathological—yet still has trouble finding friends due to his fearsome appearance. Taiga, meanwhile, uses her intimidating personality to mask her shyness and depression, and spends most of her not-school time listless by herself in her apartment. I find it easy to click with both of them on some level, whether it's with Ryuuji's (occasionally suicidal) devotion to those he cares about, or with Taiga's difficulty in properly expressing her feelings.

The secondary characters are just as likable, if not more so. Minori is perhaps the most persistently bizarre: she has about 200% more energy than the rest of the cast combined and does ridiculously outlandish things every time she shows up, ranging from making pudding in a bucket to revealing her true identity as a famed Diet-Soldier. Kitamura doesn't show up very often, perhaps due to his involvement with the student council, but whenever he does he usually joins Minori in her antics. Together, both of them boast an unusual perceptiveness towards Taiga and Ryuuji, often noticing their changes in personality before either of them do. A fifth major character, Ami Kawashima, doesn't show up until the second volume; a teen model on hiatus to finish school, Ami has perfected the sugary-sweet ditzy girl act that makes everyone like her, despite how cold and cruel she is on the inside.

What makes Toradora! stick out in my mind is the undercurrent of honesty behind the antics: the heartache, despair, and fear that various characters feel only surfaces a couple times in each volume, but they're always powerful moments and add depth to the humor, and in some cases overshadowing it. It's not unusual for a romance manga for boys to deliver this sort of depth and sensitivity—titles such as Kimagure Orange Road and Maison Ikkoku spring to mind—but it's not common. There's still places where Toradora! is clearly boys' manga—nothing attracts boys to romance manga more than attractive girls, not to mention that Ryuuji's mother spends most of her time in nightclothes—but it generally errs on the side of good taste. Ultimately, though, the biggest draw for Toradora! is that it balances comedy, drama, and romance without letting any of them overstay their welcome.

QUICK NOTE ON AUTHORSHIP: Toradora! is adapted for manga by Zekkyo from a 10-volume novel series by Yuyuko Takemiya. The three volumes of manga currently available in English cover approximately two of the novels. The novels were also adapted in 2008 into a TV anime series.

Witch Eyes by Scott Tracey

2011-11-03T03:00:00.000-07:00

Witch Eyes by Scott Tracey
"A boy who can see the world's secrets and unravel spells with just a glance.

Braden's witch eyes give him an enormous power. A mere look causes a kaleidoscopic explosion of emotions, memories, darkness, and magic. But this rare gift is also his biggest curse.

Compelled to learn about his shadowed past and the family he never knew, Braden is drawn to the city of Belle Dam, where he is soon caught between two feuding witch dynasties. Sworn rivals Catherine Lansing and Jason Thorpe will use anything--lies, manipulation, illusion, and even murder--to seize control of Braden's powers. To stop an ancient evil from destroying the town, Braden must master his gift, even through the shocking discovery that Jason is his father. While his feelings for an enigmatic boy named Trey grow deeper, Braden realizes a terrible truth: Trey is Catherine Lansing's son . . . and Braden may be destined to kill him."- summary from Amazon

I've been excited for this book for a little over a year now. I initially "met" Scott Tracey on the wonderful gay news site AfterElton while browsing around profiles and we chatted a bit. He did an interview with me for my GLBT Week last October and then I was so happy receiving an ARC at BEA (thanks Gabrielle!).

I'm glad to say that the wait and excitement was worthwhile. This is a really good debut and I can't wait to read the next book in the series and see what happens. Braden is a great main character and I really enjoyed following along on his journey (especially when it came to the scenes with Trey!) with all the twists, turns and shocking reveals.

Tracey has a fantastic world in Belle Dam that has a lot going on, history-wise, that'll take a while to unravel. I loved all the magic going on because I'm all about witches. There's always something happening and the story is just so compelling. There are some interesting characters here too, my favorite probably being Jade. Trey was a bit too hot and cold for me to really like a lot, but I can see why he does that and so I do like him a little. I hope for more romance between him and Braden in the sequel.

Overall, a compelling debut with a twist on witches and the Romeo and Juliet story. What more do you want? (It's a paperback too, so not too expensive!).

FTC: Received signed ARC while at BEA (Gabrielle from Mod Podge Bookshelf won a copy at Teen Author Carnival and was kind enough to get it signed for me!). Link above is an Amazon Associate link; any profit goes toward funding contests.

The Year that Used to be the Future

2011-11-01T06:47:00.000-07:00

Last month, a New York Times column complained about children's and YA literature, the kind of stuff GuysLitWire exists to promote. According to the commentary, kid and YA lit is all too dark, filled with too many werewolves and vampires and Death Eaters and too much dystopia. But I wonder exactly what such commentators have against these books, because, while they may involve dark subjects, they pretty much never promote darkness. Rather, just the opposite. Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games, for instance, is an enemy of the oppressive government and a champion of freedom. Nowhere in Harry Potter is the reader encouraged to be like Voldemort. It's not that the books encourage evil that bothers these critics, it's that they acknowledge it at all. The critics seem to be saying, "Hey, youth of today, stop thinking about this nasty stuff! Be happy and shiny!"

I think this is bad advice. I think we ought to be encouraging kids to read dark, dystopic literature. I mean if there's a zombie apocalypse when I'm old (or older) and I fall down and can't get up, I want the youth of today prepared to deal with the zombie menace, you know?

Ok, maybe a zombie apocalypse is unlikely, but shouldn't we best be prepared? And if you've watched any news at all for the last thirty years or so, you are well aware that there are any number of ways, with or without zombies, that the world can go to H-E-double-hockey-sticks in a hurry. Part of the appeal of dystopic literature is sitting back and thinking, "wow, at least my world is pretty sweet in comparison." But along with that thought there also comes a little motivation to keep the world from going completely awry.

So I don't think there's too much dystopic literature available to the youth of today. Au contraire, there's not nearly enough. I've been waiting a couple of months now for the next decent book about the world going in the crapper and I got so sick of the wait that I went back to the old classics. And I thought any dystopia fans out there might want to do the same. In fact I'm going to use the next several of my GuysLitWire posts to look at some of the best dystopic literature ever written--most of it from the adult section. Today I'm starting with the quintessential work in the sub-genre, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

I was alive and relatively aware (attending high school) in 1984 and my world, thankfully, looked nothing like what George Orwell predicted in his 1949 novel. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith works in The Ministry of Truth, a Party bureaucracy created to control information of all kinds. Winston's job is to rewrite history so that it serves the Party in the present moment. His entire life, and everyone else's, is monitored by telescreens which record each person's every movement. He lives in fear of the Thought Police, who drag people away not only for wanting to overthrow the Party but for far less direct "crimes," like falling in love. The lives of all Party members (and all but the poor and uneducated are required to be Party members) must be entirely devoted to Big Brother, the Party's leader. Winston, who hates the party, dares to defy it. He tries to write his personal thoughts and memories down in a diary; he has an affair with a woman; he attempts to join a resistance movement. Rebellion does not go well for him.

In contemporary culture, "Big Brother" from Nineteen Eighty-Four is usually invoked in reference to excessive surveillance, like street corner security cameras or airport body scans. But the surveillance in the actual book--the telescreen which "looks back"--is only a small part of what the Party uses to control it's people. More important is the Party's control of information and the use of culture, lies, language and torture to control the very thoughts of the people under its control.

Yes, today there are security cameras everywhere and that might make you rightfully nervous. But in most ways the1984 of my high school years did not resemble Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the world today doesn't either. Why not? What did Orwell not see? Well, for one thing, information, including the use of cameras, is a two edged sword. In our world, a camera can be turned around to expose a government as easily as to spy on an individual. Leaks of information both into and out of the Middle East are partly responsible for the Arab Spring. Even authoritarian governments like China's are finding it impossible to restrict their citizens' access to information.

Which isn't to say we should not be worried. Those security cameras everywhere are rather ominous. More troubling is our own government's willingness to use and to try to legitimize torture. And there are certainly many attempts by political parties--in or out of power--to lie and to rewrite history. Despite the wealth of information proving them wrong, many are swayed into believing things that have no basis whatever in fact. There are hints of a Nineteen Eighty-Four world lurking just beneath the surface of our own. We are privileged to live in a relatively free society, but it's not to be taken for granted.

The first two chapters of 1984 in graphic novel form are available at http://1984comic.com/comic_book.html if you're into that sort of thing.

LIFE: AN EXPLODED DIAGRAM by Mal Peet

2011-10-28T23:28:00.000-07:00

We can all name them. Books we never want to end. Books that we hope possess the magical ability to sit on our bedside table each night and grow more chapters for us to read the following morning. Well, here is a Please-Don’t-Ever-End book. Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet is an exhilarating read, intellectually, creatively, aesthetically. It is wild and bold and filled with extraordinary and lovely writing. It is like no other young adult book I have ever read. It is one of the best books I have read in years. It is masterful.

Life is a postmodern novel, with an epic story that deeply challenges typical narrative structures. It sweeps across the world from the British countryside to Cuba to America; it mixes fiction with fact; it changes from third person to first person -- sometimes in the middle of a chapter! It spans great chunks of time, opening with a suicidal Nazi pilot in the final days of World War II and ending with – well, I won’t tell you what it ends with. But how many books have you read cut from a teen romance for a chapter on the history of Cuba? Or zips from imminent teenage sex to John F. Kennedy debating the Cuban Missile Crisis inside the Whitehouse? Sometimes an exploding missile can be metaphorical.

At its heart this book is a love story and a coming-of-age story. But not just for two teenagers in love, Clem and Frankie, but an atomic-coming-of-age story for our planet and the madness of war and the tick-tock of nuclear annihilation. Clem’s dad works for Frankie’s very wealthy family on their British estate. They must keep their romance a secret. If their families find out the result will be brutal. Clem’s dad could lose his job. Frankie would be shipped off to boarding school.

It is 1962. Clem and Frankie are locked in each other's arms and Khrushchev and Kennedy are locked in a nuclear pissing contest. Kennedy really did secretly tape-record many of the Whitehouse discussions on the Cuban Missile Crisis. Those tapes have been made public and Peet has his characters quote the actual words. And amidst this impending doom of Mutually Assured Destruction, Mal Peet gives us some wonderful bits of subversive humor.

After spending 300 pages flying on a literary jet stream, I must admit that I was disappointed with how Peet decided to end the book. Not the very ending -- I actually love the very ending -- but the last 40 pages. It seems to stand apart from the rest of the book in style and substance. Maybe I was disappointed with the direction he took his story, or maybe I felt it was rushed, or maybe I didn't really buy a final piece to his puzzle. I don’t really know. But it makes no real difference because the book still soars.

And there will be another debate. Is this really a young adult book? The first 100 pages are about adults. And Clem and Frankie don’t even meet until well after that. And what young adult, some will argue, will want to read a chapter on Cuban history and another on the destructive power of atomic bombs? These are silly arguments. Of course this is a young adult book; it's a teenage romance for crying out loud. Just because it swaps vampires for history (thankfully!) and challenges readers with unique storytelling, doesn’t mean young adults won’t read it. Hand this book to the right kid – someone who appreciates good writing, is interested in history and politics, has a streak of iconoclasm -- and they will devour it. Just like I did. But don't get fooled by that young adult label. Life is a book for everyone who likes to think and feel, and those of us who want to scream to stop blowing up our planet.

Everyman's McLuhan

2011-10-26T16:10:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, reading makes me feel stupid. There are some smart people in the world, linguists and philosophers and political theorists, who can say things that sit in that area just outside the realm of my understanding. I sorta get what they're saying, but not entirely, and the fact that they are taken seriously, debated and proffered as great thinkers, makes me feel like I have a defect.

That said, there are people whose words I came across at a young age, whose ideas stuck with me and made me want to try and understand them. In my teens I came across a pair of paperback designed to appeal to the hipsters of the early 70s, books full of soundbites and quotes richly supported by free-form photo-collage work. One was a book by Buckminster Fuller called I Seem To Be A Verb and the other The Medium Is the Message by Marshall McLuhan. Of the two I was better able to grok, mostly, what Fuller was saying because the message was all about preserving what he called Spaceship Earth. The McLuhan book on the other hand stood just outside the boundaries of my brain's comfort zone. I could tell he was saying something important about the effect of media on society but I couldn't quite find a way to condense his message into talking points for conversation.

Every once in a while I've tried to dip back into McLuhan and thought I found an entry point when I came across Douglas Coupland's biography. Coupland, who popularized the term Generation X and is of my generation, crafted a readable biography but only glanced at McLuhan's theories. Still, I felt like I was getting closer to understanding if nothing else the evolution of how McLuhan came to see the world the way he did. Then, days after I finished Coupland's biography, I came across Everyman's McLuhan and my brain sighed Finally.

Linguist W. Terrence Gordon and graphic designers Eri Hamaji and Jacob Albert have essentially created a modern version of the McLuhan book I remembered from long ago. Whether they were inspired by the Jerome Agel and Quentin Fiore-designed original and given it a modern spin or whether McLuhan simply inspires this sort of presentation, Everyman's McLuhan is a handsome introduction to the thinking and ideas of the man who coined the phrases Global Village, Culture Is Our Business, and the oft-quoted-but-little-understood-by-those-who-quote-it The Medium is the Message.

Taking McLuhan's words from the past and applying them to our present times it becomes clear that McLuhan truly understood the effect of media on mass culture. Interestingly, McLuhan was able to do this by studying past linguists to understand the trends that could be applied looking forward. Even saying I get it now doesn't mean I can fully explain it. Reading Everyman's McLuhan is like gaining flashes of images in a dream that make sense in the moment and then drift away just as quickly on waking. Instead of imparting ideas that stick the book provides insight that have the ability to change as a reader's experience with media changes. The text invites revisiting and re-evaluating what McLuhan said and thought within the context of our changing daily experience.

Everyman's McLuhan
by W. Terrence Gordon
designed by Eri Hamaji and Jacob Albert
Mark Batty Publisher 2007

Lost States

2011-10-26T04:15:00.000-07:00

Growing up in Southern California it is hard not to notice that there is a simmering animosity with neighbors to the north. It isn't so much that Sacramento, the state's northern nowheresville capitol, is out of touch with the urban hipness of Los Angeles, Hollywood, and the wealthy enclaves of Santa Barbara and San Diego counties. Nor was it the hippie-centric enclaves of Santa Cruz and San Francisco who felt that the south was nothing more than water-stealing conservatives. It was the fact that California was, and is, a "destination state" that draws immigrants from all over the country, so much so that fewer than one in seven Californians is a native. Basically, the state is full of people up and down the coast who'll never agree with one another; dividing the state into factions seems like a good idea only until it comes time to discuss how to do it, at which point things fall apart.

Every state in the United States, apparently, has some version of this story. Reading Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It is a fun little romp through the growing pains of a young nation and the people who would mold it to their personal agendas. Some of these lost states were merely boundary squabbles latter settled by politicians, others were publicity stunts designed to attract tourists or business, and still more have been proposed as a matter of political or economic practicality like the annexation of various islands for some strategic advantage. Each of the Lost States receives a brief history of its proposal and why it failed as well as a map outlining (or in most cases approximating) it's location in relation to what state is currently in its place.

Many of these proposed states are clearly the results of the early land grabs and settlements of the 19th century. The really odd and interesting stories are the ones that reveal hidden, sometimes dark, histories. American Imperialism is alive and well in the proposal for adding the island nation of Saipan to the nation (or incorporating it into Guam and making an honest state of them both). The only problem is that Saipan – a slave-trading sweatshop nation that produces a huge amount of name-brand clothing with "Made in the USA" legally attached to it – would never be allowed to told what to do by a strong democracy like Guam, much less agree to US labor laws under which it would be bound.

Odder still is the former Soviet republic of Albania actively seeking to become the fifty-first state. So eager in fact that English is an official language and when the US seeks allies for foreign intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, Albania is first to step up. While there might be some political advantage gained by having a state wedged into the Adriatic coast between Greece and Montenegro, chances are better that Russia and the European Union might see the move as an opening salvo toward world domination. As Lost States suggests, Albania courting statehood is akin to "talking about marriage on the first date. Run, America, run!"

There's a lot to be learned in this book beyond the trivial. Apparently when Texas was admitted to the Union it was allowed the provision to divide itself up into as many as four states without having to seek Congressional approval. As the book points out, this means that the area of Texas could have as many as eight senators in Washington instead of two. It seems like Governor Rick Perry should have focused his attentions on dividing his state rather than promoting succession a while back. It amazes me that provision is still on the books.

Trinklein's maps are individual and well-created for the most part. Sometimes modifying older maps, creating new maps as necessary, for anyone who loves looking at or studying maps its fun to imagine how different things would be if, say, we talked vacationing in New Sweden instead of Maryland, or went to the Grand Canyon in New Mexico, or if, somehow, No Man's Land simply remained the unclaimed panhandle of Oklahoma.

Lost States:
True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It
by Michael J. Trinklein
Quirk Books 2010

A Gay Fish is a Good Fish

2011-10-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

What is Fish, drawn well, and features lots of hugs and gay boys looking moon-y over other gay boys?

Cavalcade of Boys by author and cartoonist Tim Fish!

I've been a fan of Tim's artwork ever since he drew for the whimsical series, Young Bottoms in Love. Cavalcade is over 500 pages of gay goodness, more of a graphic anthology than a graphic novel, as it features recurring characters and their romantic adventures and mishaps.

Tim understands the trials-and-tribulations of being gay and in your late teens/early 20s. While the overall goal of the book is certainly comedic, there are some heart-wrenching situations--times you, as reader, will want to cry out "Foul!" or "Don't do it, man!" Your emotions will be scored raw at times--you will want to tear out some pages and pin them to your wall, tear out some pages because the boys you have come to care for have done bad things. Like life.

The art is safe, if you're wondering. Some panels are suggestive rather than demonstrative. Any reader above 14 should read this and grin.

Check out Tim's website, which I wish was less minimalistic. His books can be a bit hard to find, might be more expensive than other gay comics, but the price and the hunt is worth it. Like love.

The Project by Brian Falkner

2011-10-24T03:00:00.000-07:00

I have to admit that as titles go, The Project is definitely on the bland side. Despite this, the book itself is quite exciting, even though it is about the most boring book in the world. As Luke, one of the main characters in The Project, puts it, "This is a book about the most boring book in the world, which is a different book altogether."

Luke and Tommy wanted to avoid reading the book they were sure was the most boring, The Last of the Mohicans. And what better way to avoid reading (especially if, like Luke, you can't stand reading) than pulling a prank that demonstrates your feelings about the book? Unfortunately, as awesome as the prank would have been, Luke and Tommy get caught. They will still have to read The Last of the Mohicans...unless they can prove that the James Fenimore Cooper classic really is the most boring book in the world, in which case the vice principal of their school will let them do their English assignment on the book of their choice.

A quick Google search doesn't bring up anything that will help Luke's case. He does, however, find an article about a 19th century book that many historians consider the most boring book in the world. Only one copy of Leonardo's River was published, and it's been missing for over a hundred years. It's worth a fortune, so there's no way Luke has just stumbled upon it in an Iowa library, right?

He has, and he's not the only one who recognized the book that day. As Luke and Tommy attempt to steal the book from the flooded library, they realize that they're not alone in the library. Someone else is willing to do anything to get their hands on the book because while the book is boring, it also contains a secret that could change the history of the world.

Okay, some of the plot twists are implausible and/or wildly coincidental—beginning Luke's photographic memory and Tommy's desire to become a spy (and his ability to speak German), making these otherwise ordinary, average best friends the perfect duo outwit the bad guys—but this is a mild criticism for a book as entertaining and easy to read as Brian Falkner's The Project. It's fast-paced, action-packed, with some funny moments and a nice combination of high stakes without taking itself too seriously. Or, in other words, NOT BORING.

Best of all, The Project is the first book by Falkner that I've read, and I enjoyed it enough that I'm looking forward to reading his previous books, including Brain Jack, which Leila reviewed for Guys Lit Wire last year.

Book source: public library.

Cross-posted at The YA YA YAs.

An interview with Edward Ormondroyd, author of "David & the Phoenix"

2011-10-23T05:14:00.000-07:00

Some days, you have just GOTTA love the internet.

A random comment left on the Charlotte's Library blog MONTHS ago garnered me an email from author Marc Tyler Nobleman (BOYS OF STEEL: The Creators of Superman) and a link to his Edward Ormondroyd interview!

Edward Who, you ask?

Edward Ormondroyd (I love that last name) is the author of my favorite 1963 (reissue, Purple House Press, 2003) time travel novel TIME AT THE TOP, which Charlotte so ably reviewed for an August TIMESLIP TUESDAY feature, and to which, I must admit, I wrote a very fanfic-y sequel at about the age of twelve. (Do not ask to see this thing. No: do not.)

Mr. Ormondroyd's first novel, DAVID AND THE PHOENIX, has seen a resurgence of popularity due to The Boy Wizard -- a lot of boys+magic novels are going into reprint for the same reason, which is All To The Good -- and as the Phoenix novel is a favorite of Marc's, he tracked the author down. Discovering that somehow Edward Ormondroyd had never before been interviewed, Marc set to it with forty-one questions. Forty-one!! The interview is - for obvious reasons - in two parts; Part the first, here, followed by its conclusion.

I was happy to see that TIME AT THE TOP is the author's all-time favorite book of those he's written - it's mine too! I hope that eventually someone redoes the 90's Showtime movie version of the book, because they totally ruined it. (Stupid 90's TV.) Ahem.

Thank you Charlotte, for reviewing an old favorite of mine, and thank you, Marc, for going the extra mile to actually finding the author and letting him know how much his works are loved.

It's the internet: for once using its powers for good.

The Why Chromosome: Why Boys Do Love Books

2011-10-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

My online acquaintance Alethea told me about the upcoming event called The Why Chromosome: Why Boys Do Love Books. It sounded like something GuysLitWire supporters would like, so I thought I'd spread the word! The details are as follows:

The Why Chromosome is an author event and book signing for readers, writers, bloggers, and educators interested in middle grade and young adult literature. Our special focus will be on boys and encouraging their love of reading.

When: Sunday, October 30, 2011 - 1:00 - 4:00 pm

Where: Mrs. Nelson’s Toy & Book Shop, 1030 Bonita Avenue, La Verne, CA 91750

Grassroots organization Bridge to Books is following up their successful YA in Bloom summer party with another author extravaganza, The Why Chromosome: Why Boys Do Love Books!

The end-of-October event will feature a panel of seven young adult and middle grade book authors to discuss boys and their reading habits. Authors Jonathan Auxier, Greg van Eekhout, Mark Jeffrey, G. Neri, Andrew Smith, John Stephens and Allen Zadoff will participate in the panel. They will also be available to sign books.

Ticketed attendees will enjoy food, drinks, swag bags and will also have the opportunity to participate in a trivia contest, win raffle prizes, and have their books signed.

Readers of all ages are welcome to attend, as the goal of the event is to bring together young readers, parents, educators, librarians, authors, and publishers, in the organization’s continuing mission to unite book lovers of all kinds. The overall goal is simple: To connect kids to reading.

Tickets are available through Mrs. Nelson’s Toy & Book Shop at (909) 599-4558.

Visit the event website for blog updates as the event approaches: http://bit.ly/whyboysread

To buy tickets or learn more, visit the Bridge to Books blog. Bookmark that site and check it for details on future events.

Authors, publishers, volunteers, and sponsors who would like to get involved with the Why Chromosome events should email bridgetobooks@gmail.com

Children of the Street by Kwei Quartey

2011-10-20T07:26:00.000-07:00

Sometime last year I mentioned the Cain-prize-winning short story "Stickfighting Days" by Olufemi Terry. It's about street boys - orphaned or homeless kids - who roam the worst areas of an unnamed city in Africa (most likely Nairobi) looking to get by and take out their frustrations in a violent, deadly "king of the hill" series of stickfighting contests.

I couldn't help but think of Terry's story as I read the new mystery by Kwei Quartey: Children of the Street. In it, a serial killer is preying on the abandoned and lost street kids of Accra, Ghana, and it paints a pretty bleak picture of street life in the West African city. Quartey's detective, Darko Dawson, has a heart as big and open as any I've ever encountered in mystery fiction, and his dogged pursuit of the killer takes him, and us, on a tour of some the most startling, gutwrenching aspects of the capitol city of one of the world's fastest growing economies.

But that paragraph, the one I just wrote, gets at some of the strongest, and weakest, elements of this ultimately fascinating mystery.
In Wife of the Gods, Kwei Quartey's first Darko Dawson mystery, he pulled off an amazing stunt: he was able to explore the people and culture of Ghana, and create a fascinating hero in his detective, all foregrounded by a riveting mystery in which nothing is merely background or flavor, but everything bears down on the crimes within like an unstoppable train. It was excellent, and I eagerly awaited Quartey's follow-up.

Children of the Street is not as tightly constructed a novel - it suffers a bit from the weightiness of its subject. By this, I mean that the book bogs down a bit in the middle as we are walked through the dire realities of street life for the kids. Darko Dawson asks many questions of the social workers, kids, and others at the margins of this most marginalized life, but at times the questioning feels more like an opportunity for the author to introduce material and insight he's gained doing research for the novel (statistics, reflection on living conditions, social forces at work that have created this permanent class of underaged working poor) than the questions of a police detective hunting down a serial killer.

And this is part of my struggle with Children of the Street - it's trying to be both a fascinating, good mystery (which it is, for the most part), AND a socially-conscious, call to action for a section of Ghanian (and, let's face it, all urbanized, high-growth economy) societies. And that's good, right? But the novel can't be all things to all people, so at times it drags.

I sound like I'm complaining about a good thing, and I would be, if Quartey's first novel hadn't set such high expectations. Is Children of the Street worth reading? Yes! It's a solid mystery, anchored by a great character. And, as I say above, it does have it's flaws, but you better believe I'll be back for Quartey's next Darko Dawson mystery.

In the end, these are great novels, great mysteries, set in an oft-neglected, yet fascinating place and populated by a character not often seen in mystery fiction. Maybe in the end, like it's hero Darko Dawson, Children of the Street's only real flaw is that it has too big a heart, and isn't that the best kind of flaw to have?

Kwei Quartey's website is a great one, with book trailers, links, and information about where to get the books (he supports indy booksellers, which is always a good thing).

Brian Wood's Northlanders

2011-10-19T08:00:00.000-07:00

Q. What happens when a viking gets bit by a radioactive spider?

A. The radioactive spider gets viking powers.

Brian Wood's Northlanders contains very little of the fantastic elements common in most comic series. There's no superpowers or zombies. And while Norse mythology comes into play in some story arcs, it serves to add flavoring and background. For the most part, this is real, raw history. But when it's history of a culture as brutal and beautiful and fascinating as the Norse, all that other stuff just gets in the way.

Also unique for an on-going series, Northlanders doesn't focus on a particular cast of characters. Instead, Wood said in an interview, "From day one it was always my desire to cover as much ground as possible. Right now, I have stories that span from 760-1100 AD, from Russia to Greenland, from the perspective of men, women, and children, from the Vikings themselves to the people they conquered (or tried to). That breadth of story is what makes the book what it is."

Since Northlanders is an anthology series, you can jump in at just about any point. However, I do recommend the graphic novels The Plague Widow and Metal and Other Stories as excellent places to start.

Shape-Shifting Fantasy Adventure: THE CLOUD ROADS

2011-10-18T08:00:00.000-07:00

I wasn't familiar with SFF author Martha Wells, but I was intrigued by the refreshing premise of her YA fantasy novel The Cloud Roads. You'll find no vampires or werewolves here, but you will find shapeshifters who can morph into flying beings both beautiful and terrible. In a starred review of an earlier novel by Wells, Kirkus Reviews said, "In a field teeming with clones, retreads, and solipsistic doorstoppers, Wells dares--and gloriously succeeds--to be different." And different this one is—but the story rests on a solid foundation of some of my favorite fantasy tropes. Moon, the protagonist, is an orphan with an enigmatic past, who finds out he is not alone in the world but rather a member of a race of shapeshifters, the Raksura. Neither he nor the Raksura know it yet, but they need him in order to save their entire race from another set of shape-shifters: the violent, destructive, and unscrupulous Fell.

Moon, the narrator of the novel, strikes a perfect balance between the novelty of being a shapeshifter and the familiarity of emotions and reactions that characterize just about any young man coming of age. He's relatable yet also mysterious and sort of awe-inspiring. Over the course of the novel, his character development is satisfying--at the beginning, we see Moon as a decent guy, but sort of hapless, and cursed with misfortune, mainly stemming from the fact that he is so different and forced to hide his difference. If you happen to be a shapeshifter, but the only other shapeshifters the groundling races know about are the Fell...it's just not a good idea to let them find out what you are.

At the beginning of the novel, this is what happens to Moon--yet again. But this time, his exile leads him to more of his kind. The only problem is...he doesn't quite trust them, doesn't quite trust their motives toward him. At the same time, it's his status as an outsider that puts him in a unique position to help the seemingly doomed colony of Raksura.

One of the ongoing arcs in this story is Moon learning what it means to not be stubbornly solitary and closed off—learning that there are times when it's okay, even right, to trust and rely on others. And, of course, a big part of the book is Moon's journey to finding out who he really is, and figuring out what he should do with his life aside from all the people around him telling him what they think he ought to be doing.

This is an action-packed and exciting adventure with a high ratio of Neat Stuff Per Chapter without trying too hard or being overly dense with new information. And, can I just say how much I appreciated it that the author dealt very early on with the question of just what happens to your clothes when you shape-shift. (Hint: they don't rip into tatters like the Incredible Hulk.) A highly recommended read for fantasy fans, particularly fans of tightly written traditional fantasy and sci-fi with great characters and lots of attention paid to the different cultures in the world at hand, like Kage Baker's fantasy books or Tamora Pierce's Tortall novels.

Review Copy Source: Author/publisher. This review originally appeared, in slightly different format, on Finding Wonderland.

Compulsion by Heidi Ayarbe

2011-10-17T13:21:00.000-07:00

The numbers have been good, so lately life has been pretty good. If Jake Martin can keep things together and win a soccer title for his high school, he can forget about them. But for now, the prime numbers are the only thing keeping him on an even keel.

In Heidi Ayarbe's Compulsion (Compuls1on on the cover), Jake has been barely keeping up with school and especially struggles with showing up on time. With a teacher looking to make an example of a jock, Jake can't be late or he will be ineligible for the championship.

Ayarbe delves into compulsiveness and how it can rule every part of someone's life. Readers are given unique insight into his thoughts as Jake constantly checks on the time and other numbers and how they make him feel. With only his sister as a confidant, Jake is convinced that after he gets his trophy and graduates that he can forget about prime numbers and his reliance on them.

This is an interesting novel and teens interested in mental health and compulsiveness will appreciate its fairly blunt portrayal. Jake is a strongly drawn character and readers will be rooting for him in the midst of his struggles and unhealthy relationships.

Dropping into Jake’s thoughts is interesting at first but it can make parts of the novel difficult to slog through. The point is to really get readers to understand what Jake is going through, though it can be tedious and a bit overwhelming.

I usually give recommendations of similar books, but I am somewhat stumped on this one because of its uniqueness. My best idea is sports books about overcoming obstacles and the emotions affects that goes into the craft like Robert Lipsyte's Center Field.

Frank O'Hara's Lunch Poems

2011-10-14T11:32:00.000-07:00

Rewarding though it is, poetry is not always welcoming. Emily Dickinson is rather staid. Robert Frost is so somber. Muriel Rukeyser is frequently esoteric. Even Shakespeare’s sonnets can be at times as overwhelmingly florid as the lace cushions on your grandmother’s couch.

Frank O’Hara has seen a resurgence of interest lately. His Meditations in an Emergency popped up in Mad Men and friends keep bringing him up. O’Hara achieves the neat trick of placing within a taut form a spontaneous eye for his world.

Form was to him a necessary foundation, "As for measure and other technical apparatus, that's just common sense: if you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There's nothing metaphysical about it."

The content of the poems is a grab-bag of New York life in the fifties and sixties. Parties, restaurants, celebrities, artists, run-down apartment buildings and noisy streets all filter through a kaleidoscopic embrace. O’Hara is particularly adept at capturing the scope of this environment in his Lunch Poems.

“The Day Lady Died” is characteristic of what O’Hara does best, an extremely personal reaction to a public event, but with an ironically self-aware eye holding him back from over-seriousness, couched in the midst of a deceptively scattered whirlwind of products, places, and friends referred to with inviting familiarity, drawing out the individual located within the objects of modern commerce.

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets

in Ghana are doing these days

I go on to the bank

and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)

doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life

and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine

for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do

think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or

Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres

of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine

after practically going to sleep with quandariness

and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE

Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and

then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue

and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and

casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton

of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it

and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of

leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT

while she whispered a song along the keyboard

to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing