Books of 2008
Jan. 4th, 2009 02:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lady_schrapnellThis is later than usual, partly because I realised my reading record-keeping last year had left a lot to be desired, so ended up reading through all my 2008 posts one night I thought I'd be doing this one. In terms of quantity read, I'd mark myself with a large F(AIL) this year, but the quality (of the books, not my reading) was still great.
Best Children's Family Story (to fill the Hilary McKay gap this year):
The Penderwicks and The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, by Jeanne Birdsall. The family isn't as messed up as the Casson family, certainly, but there's something similar to me in the feeling of the dynamics - both within the family and in the bonds formed with people who become friends and created family - to the dynamics of a McKay family. And there are allusions to so many of my other favourite children's books and authors, and the characters are so likable, so nice, in the deepest possible meaning of the word (without being at all goody-goody), that reading these two books gave me enormous pleasure. There was criticism I heard a few times about the books -- that they wouldn't appeal to children as much as to adults. But I feel as much as I did when I read them that I'd have loved these books as a child and I'm morally certain my two would have as well.
Best Older Children's (but not YA) Tragic Childhood Handling (also the book which made me most glad NOT to be responsible for deciding about classroom reading):
Waiting for Normal, by Leslie Connor. This story is tough. I had to skip to the end at one point, in order to find if I could keep reading. Granted, I'm a big wimp, and this got to me on multiple levels (the fearful child I was, the mother I was and am, and the person who knows more than she ever wanted to about bi-polar disorder, among others), so mileage will vary. I loved Addie's voice, and her courage and hopefulness, loved the fact that her teachers and the other kids at school were nice too, and above all, loved Dwight. But despite that, and despite the largely happy ending, I didn't feel it was a totally hopeful book, and if I were in the situation of having to decide whether to read it with a class of 9 year olds, or 11 year olds, or whatever, I'd be extremely hesitant to do so without knowing all the children very well.
Best History Book (not set in Roman Britain):
Red Moon at Sharpsburg, by Rosemary Wells. I did a pretty long write-up of this one when I read it, and don't really have the energy to do it all again, but the short version is: US civil war, from the perspective of a girl from the South. It never glosses over the horrors of that war, and never settles for a simplistic black-and-white depiction of either side, but neither does it ever seem to err on the side of gratuitous horror. As I said in the write-up before, India's desire to be educated and to learn science, against all the societal expectations for women's roles - to my mind - hits a perfect balance between totally accepting the restrictions of previous ways of thinking and unrealistically modern mind-set.
Best Realist YA (a straight-forward category, for once!):
Sweethearts, by Sara Zarr. I loved this book. It's one of the shining examples for me of the interest and relevance of good YA to readers of all ages. Although the details of the self-transformation Jennifer/Jenna makes would only be possible for a child - and one able to switch to a new school as part of the transformation at that - the psychological nature of her response to events in her life isn't, and the truth in there of how people deal with memory and self-understanding and acceptance, and the way we can narrate stories about our own pasts - is spot on for any age. Another thing I appreciated, as I said before, was that Jenna's problematic relationship with food wasn't one that defined her or the story - this isn't an 'issue novel' about eating disorders, or abuse or bullying, though all are in the story. (I read Zarr's first book, Story of a Girl, a bit later, and found it was great too, though a bit more grit-your-teeth-to-bear-it reading. Not because she'd been caught in the back of a car with a boy by her father when she was only 13, which got the book in trouble in various quarters, I gather, but because it had that tension building where you know a character you like is deluding herself and heading towards a huge let-down AND you know she's about to make a bad mistake that will hurt people and make her feel really, really terrible.... )
Another book almost in this category, that I thought was wonderful too was Drawing the Ocean, by Carolyn McCullough. It looked as if it might follow every 'Mean Girls' plot-line of new girl going to school, being taken up for whatever reason by the queen bitch of the cool crowd, and finding at the last minute that she really valued the friendship of the unpopular outsider. (It's a good story, of course, and could still be well worth reading if well done.) And it starts off that way, but very quietly diverges at unexpected points, and is beautifully written. But most of all, I think it won my heart by having the protagonist's dead twin brother talk to her throughout the book and never raised its hands in the air and said either "He's a Real Ghost So This Is a Ghost Story!" or "He's a Manifestation of Her Unresolved Grief and Will Stop Talking to Her When She Deals with It So This Is Realism!". He was just there, and he talked to her. Love that.
And then there was The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart. I thought it was one of the most thought-provoking books I've read in a long time - it certainly had more social investigation than most books since the great 19th century novels - but I can see people finding it hard to love. I do myself like my characters a bit more on the kind and caring about people side than the brilliant and driven side, and Frankie's not exactly the former. On the other hand, I came out of it thinking it was fantastic, so don't quite know how to rank it in my own list.
Finally moving on to the Fantasy, and starting with -- Best YA Fantasy of 2008, and Best Prequel to Best-Loved Books Too:
A Stranger To Command, by Sherwood Smith. Prequel to Crown Duel and Court Duel (or The Crown and Court Duet). If I'd really stopped to think about it before diving into this one, I might have been very worried that it would have been nearly impossible for this book to have had enough story in its own right to satisfy me, while bringing a much-loved character up to the point at which he's met in Crown Duel, and have him be true to that story as well as this. And not have it be just a bit of plot thrown together with a one-line character sketch which is slotted-in by numbers, as it were. But I didn't think to worry and would have been reassured by page one even if I had -- it was all sheer reading pleasure. Great story, great characters, fascinating links to the Inda books (which I'll talk about soon), and interestingly complex considerations about different types of societies and how they work. An added bonus for me was being kicked into a cooking enthusiasm by the descriptions of meals in the various restaurants visited - the result being a chicken (simmered in beer with lots of fresh garlic and just-picked local onions) dish which was received with universal appreciation. Well, in this three-person (and two-dog) universe, anyway.
Flora's Dare, by Ysabel Wilce, would - in my categories, at any rate - go in the YA rather than children's fantasy group, and it would get a separate box for sequel which I liked even more than the first book. Everything I loved about Flora Segunda was there - the wonderful exuberance of the world, the mad family, Udo, and of course Flora herself. What made it easier for me to love it wholeheartedly was that it felt as if it were settled more firmly into YA, and the slight shakiness there seemed to be as Flora Segunda rattled between children's and YA was missing. I loved the language too, and the occasional use of words which aren't used in English (or Spanish) but there's no explanations - the reader seems to be trusted to figure it out. I giggled a lot at the label on the box of condoms...
Also in the YA fantasy category, though neither prequel nor sequel, is Repossessed, by A.M. Jenkins. The story of what happens when Kiriel, a fallen angel (he prefers that to demon) decides to take a break from his job in Hell - and steals the body of a teen 'slacker' who's just about to step out in front of a truck. I found it very, very funny, often surprisingly moving, and very thoughtful in a light-touch kind of way.
Finally, Sherwood Smith's Inda - Inda Quartet? Is there a series name? Not sure. Anyone who's read and loved Inda will maybe get it when I say that finishing the last page of the last book was like -- well, I don't want to sound too hyperbolic, so I won't use the word 'death', no matter how it's modified - but it was a huge wrench. And they may also be unsurprised when I say that I had a very strange moment while reading a couple of chapters printed out (fast draft, faint print and all) in a cafe in the city centre. After finishing my pot of tea, I got up to put on my jacket, and found myself saying in my head 'I'm really worried about Inda', and then having the oddest mental sideways-shift as I realised I was in Dublin. But that was the way it went - 'I'm here, not there', rather than 'Inda's a character, not real'.
The more surprising thing I found is that this is fantasy, which read, over the whole group of books, rather like history at times. And not just because it's got kings and governments and wars, and not just because it's such a real world that it has the depth of back-story 'real' history does - and not just any history, but specifically Rosemary Sutcliff's British books. There's the same presentation of the sweep of history, rather than history as isolated 'important' moments, and that sense of continuity is given to the reader in similar ways - by references back to people or events, by recurring use of phrases which allude to earlier times, and sometimes by little dropped - artifacts, I guess. The rings and bracelets of Rosemary Sutcliff's books are more obviously artifactish, but seeing the letters Tdor and Hadand exchange with Joret in the Inda books turn up as archived manuscripts in A Stranger to Command was both slightly disconcerting and fantastic. And I was thinking about the fact that many of the major characters were kings, princes or jarls (the Marlovans, anyway), and of course they would potentially have a huge impact on the course of world events, but remembered that at a crucial hinge-point, a memory of something Jeje - with her life-long hatred of kings -- had said which had exacted a promise was enough to prevent an action being taken which would have had devastating personal and world-wide results. That's how real these books felt to me: I'd find myself thinking about the history of the world, rather than about a plot-line.
Two for the Most Disappointing Category:
Princess Ben by Catherine Gilbert Murdock and Impossible by Nancy Werlin. Princess Ben is in here because of how extremely highly I rate Murdock's two other books, Dairy Queen and The Off-Season. I'd never have dreamed the same author could write a book so flat in characterisation and paper-thin in world-building, and the treatment of the character's fatness? Dreadful. Impossible I'd say was the better of the two books, but the retelling of the "Scarborough Fair" ballad as a real-world fantasy is such a wonderful idea that the leaden writing dragged it down horribly. (I'd read Are You Alone on Purpose? just a short time before Impossible, and really enjoyed it, so it's not that I just don't like Werlin's writing style.)![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
steepholm was lucky enough to get many bits read to him when I was there before I'd finally had enough. Couldn't stand the romantic pairing either, and just got tired of the characters altogether. Such a nifty idea though.
2009 is already getting off to a good start, with Graceling, which I'm currently reading with great appreciation, and R.J. Anderson's Knife next up...
Best Children's Family Story (to fill the Hilary McKay gap this year):
The Penderwicks and The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, by Jeanne Birdsall. The family isn't as messed up as the Casson family, certainly, but there's something similar to me in the feeling of the dynamics - both within the family and in the bonds formed with people who become friends and created family - to the dynamics of a McKay family. And there are allusions to so many of my other favourite children's books and authors, and the characters are so likable, so nice, in the deepest possible meaning of the word (without being at all goody-goody), that reading these two books gave me enormous pleasure. There was criticism I heard a few times about the books -- that they wouldn't appeal to children as much as to adults. But I feel as much as I did when I read them that I'd have loved these books as a child and I'm morally certain my two would have as well.
Best Older Children's (but not YA) Tragic Childhood Handling (also the book which made me most glad NOT to be responsible for deciding about classroom reading):
Waiting for Normal, by Leslie Connor. This story is tough. I had to skip to the end at one point, in order to find if I could keep reading. Granted, I'm a big wimp, and this got to me on multiple levels (the fearful child I was, the mother I was and am, and the person who knows more than she ever wanted to about bi-polar disorder, among others), so mileage will vary. I loved Addie's voice, and her courage and hopefulness, loved the fact that her teachers and the other kids at school were nice too, and above all, loved Dwight. But despite that, and despite the largely happy ending, I didn't feel it was a totally hopeful book, and if I were in the situation of having to decide whether to read it with a class of 9 year olds, or 11 year olds, or whatever, I'd be extremely hesitant to do so without knowing all the children very well.
Best History Book (not set in Roman Britain):
Red Moon at Sharpsburg, by Rosemary Wells. I did a pretty long write-up of this one when I read it, and don't really have the energy to do it all again, but the short version is: US civil war, from the perspective of a girl from the South. It never glosses over the horrors of that war, and never settles for a simplistic black-and-white depiction of either side, but neither does it ever seem to err on the side of gratuitous horror. As I said in the write-up before, India's desire to be educated and to learn science, against all the societal expectations for women's roles - to my mind - hits a perfect balance between totally accepting the restrictions of previous ways of thinking and unrealistically modern mind-set.
Best Realist YA (a straight-forward category, for once!):
Sweethearts, by Sara Zarr. I loved this book. It's one of the shining examples for me of the interest and relevance of good YA to readers of all ages. Although the details of the self-transformation Jennifer/Jenna makes would only be possible for a child - and one able to switch to a new school as part of the transformation at that - the psychological nature of her response to events in her life isn't, and the truth in there of how people deal with memory and self-understanding and acceptance, and the way we can narrate stories about our own pasts - is spot on for any age. Another thing I appreciated, as I said before, was that Jenna's problematic relationship with food wasn't one that defined her or the story - this isn't an 'issue novel' about eating disorders, or abuse or bullying, though all are in the story. (I read Zarr's first book, Story of a Girl, a bit later, and found it was great too, though a bit more grit-your-teeth-to-bear-it reading. Not because she'd been caught in the back of a car with a boy by her father when she was only 13, which got the book in trouble in various quarters, I gather, but because it had that tension building where you know a character you like is deluding herself and heading towards a huge let-down AND you know she's about to make a bad mistake that will hurt people and make her feel really, really terrible.... )
Another book almost in this category, that I thought was wonderful too was Drawing the Ocean, by Carolyn McCullough. It looked as if it might follow every 'Mean Girls' plot-line of new girl going to school, being taken up for whatever reason by the queen bitch of the cool crowd, and finding at the last minute that she really valued the friendship of the unpopular outsider. (It's a good story, of course, and could still be well worth reading if well done.) And it starts off that way, but very quietly diverges at unexpected points, and is beautifully written. But most of all, I think it won my heart by having the protagonist's dead twin brother talk to her throughout the book and never raised its hands in the air and said either "He's a Real Ghost So This Is a Ghost Story!" or "He's a Manifestation of Her Unresolved Grief and Will Stop Talking to Her When She Deals with It So This Is Realism!". He was just there, and he talked to her. Love that.
And then there was The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart. I thought it was one of the most thought-provoking books I've read in a long time - it certainly had more social investigation than most books since the great 19th century novels - but I can see people finding it hard to love. I do myself like my characters a bit more on the kind and caring about people side than the brilliant and driven side, and Frankie's not exactly the former. On the other hand, I came out of it thinking it was fantastic, so don't quite know how to rank it in my own list.
Finally moving on to the Fantasy, and starting with -- Best YA Fantasy of 2008, and Best Prequel to Best-Loved Books Too:
A Stranger To Command, by Sherwood Smith. Prequel to Crown Duel and Court Duel (or The Crown and Court Duet). If I'd really stopped to think about it before diving into this one, I might have been very worried that it would have been nearly impossible for this book to have had enough story in its own right to satisfy me, while bringing a much-loved character up to the point at which he's met in Crown Duel, and have him be true to that story as well as this. And not have it be just a bit of plot thrown together with a one-line character sketch which is slotted-in by numbers, as it were. But I didn't think to worry and would have been reassured by page one even if I had -- it was all sheer reading pleasure. Great story, great characters, fascinating links to the Inda books (which I'll talk about soon), and interestingly complex considerations about different types of societies and how they work. An added bonus for me was being kicked into a cooking enthusiasm by the descriptions of meals in the various restaurants visited - the result being a chicken (simmered in beer with lots of fresh garlic and just-picked local onions) dish which was received with universal appreciation. Well, in this three-person (and two-dog) universe, anyway.
Flora's Dare, by Ysabel Wilce, would - in my categories, at any rate - go in the YA rather than children's fantasy group, and it would get a separate box for sequel which I liked even more than the first book. Everything I loved about Flora Segunda was there - the wonderful exuberance of the world, the mad family, Udo, and of course Flora herself. What made it easier for me to love it wholeheartedly was that it felt as if it were settled more firmly into YA, and the slight shakiness there seemed to be as Flora Segunda rattled between children's and YA was missing. I loved the language too, and the occasional use of words which aren't used in English (or Spanish) but there's no explanations - the reader seems to be trusted to figure it out. I giggled a lot at the label on the box of condoms...
Also in the YA fantasy category, though neither prequel nor sequel, is Repossessed, by A.M. Jenkins. The story of what happens when Kiriel, a fallen angel (he prefers that to demon) decides to take a break from his job in Hell - and steals the body of a teen 'slacker' who's just about to step out in front of a truck. I found it very, very funny, often surprisingly moving, and very thoughtful in a light-touch kind of way.
Finally, Sherwood Smith's Inda - Inda Quartet? Is there a series name? Not sure. Anyone who's read and loved Inda will maybe get it when I say that finishing the last page of the last book was like -- well, I don't want to sound too hyperbolic, so I won't use the word 'death', no matter how it's modified - but it was a huge wrench. And they may also be unsurprised when I say that I had a very strange moment while reading a couple of chapters printed out (fast draft, faint print and all) in a cafe in the city centre. After finishing my pot of tea, I got up to put on my jacket, and found myself saying in my head 'I'm really worried about Inda', and then having the oddest mental sideways-shift as I realised I was in Dublin. But that was the way it went - 'I'm here, not there', rather than 'Inda's a character, not real'.
The more surprising thing I found is that this is fantasy, which read, over the whole group of books, rather like history at times. And not just because it's got kings and governments and wars, and not just because it's such a real world that it has the depth of back-story 'real' history does - and not just any history, but specifically Rosemary Sutcliff's British books. There's the same presentation of the sweep of history, rather than history as isolated 'important' moments, and that sense of continuity is given to the reader in similar ways - by references back to people or events, by recurring use of phrases which allude to earlier times, and sometimes by little dropped - artifacts, I guess. The rings and bracelets of Rosemary Sutcliff's books are more obviously artifactish, but seeing the letters Tdor and Hadand exchange with Joret in the Inda books turn up as archived manuscripts in A Stranger to Command was both slightly disconcerting and fantastic. And I was thinking about the fact that many of the major characters were kings, princes or jarls (the Marlovans, anyway), and of course they would potentially have a huge impact on the course of world events, but remembered that at a crucial hinge-point, a memory of something Jeje - with her life-long hatred of kings -- had said which had exacted a promise was enough to prevent an action being taken which would have had devastating personal and world-wide results. That's how real these books felt to me: I'd find myself thinking about the history of the world, rather than about a plot-line.
Two for the Most Disappointing Category:
Princess Ben by Catherine Gilbert Murdock and Impossible by Nancy Werlin. Princess Ben is in here because of how extremely highly I rate Murdock's two other books, Dairy Queen and The Off-Season. I'd never have dreamed the same author could write a book so flat in characterisation and paper-thin in world-building, and the treatment of the character's fatness? Dreadful. Impossible I'd say was the better of the two books, but the retelling of the "Scarborough Fair" ballad as a real-world fantasy is such a wonderful idea that the leaden writing dragged it down horribly. (I'd read Are You Alone on Purpose? just a short time before Impossible, and really enjoyed it, so it's not that I just don't like Werlin's writing style.)
steepholm was lucky enough to get many bits read to him when I was there before I'd finally had enough. Couldn't stand the romantic pairing either, and just got tired of the characters altogether. Such a nifty idea though.2009 is already getting off to a good start, with Graceling, which I'm currently reading with great appreciation, and R.J. Anderson's Knife next up...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 01:28 am (UTC)S.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 12:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 02:13 am (UTC)It's good to hear your comments about Princess Ben; I've not read it
yetbut heard some of the same thing fromno subject
Date: 2009-01-05 12:48 pm (UTC)I'll be interested to hear what you think if you do attempt Princess Ben - it'd be surprising if your response was totally different from
Graceling was one you recommended, right? I seem to keep remembering these things all wrong, but I think I read your shout-out about it first.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 05:17 pm (UTC)Yes, I recommended Graceling! And full disclosure, the author (http://kristincashore.blogspot.com/) is a friend of mine. But that's not why I love the book.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-05 07:32 pm (UTC)About the disclosure - I remembered that she was a friend, but just wasn't sure you were the one to whom that memory should be attached. And anyway, both my daughter and my sweetie are writers and I get to beta-read for a favourite author, so I'd be the last one to assume you loved it just because the author is a friend.
no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 10:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-06 10:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-08 09:38 am (UTC)A stranger to command...
Date: 2009-01-18 04:42 pm (UTC)Great way to discover this! :-)
Re: A stranger to command...
Date: 2009-01-18 04:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-30 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-01-30 09:37 pm (UTC)