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lady_schrapnellDefinitely behind in book talking, so will fire ahead with a quick run-through of a couple of recent reads, despite feeling as if my head were over-stuffed with cold porridge. (The much-anticipated anti-migraine drug for which I had such high hopes? Appears to be making me feel worse. Hurrah.)
First off: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart. I love the Ruby books (The Boyfriend List and The Boy Book), as they're funny, intelligent, got the hint of the old problem in there to keep it feeling serious enough for my inner puritan (Ruby gets panic attacks and is sent to a downright wonderful therapist at the beginning of the first book) and they're intelligently funny. (Yup, I know I already said that, but I felt like saying it again.) Dramarama was excellent and the incredible John Green said it was the best book of the year (did I invent that? Hope not!), but I couldn't enjoy it as much for reasons having nothing to do with its merit. (Stage performances - tryouts? At which you get stage fright and do badly??) I've been waiting for The Disreputable History for a while now, and though I had no idea exactly what type of book to expect, couldn't have anticipated the book it is in any way. Not sure I can write anything sensible about it either - I mean, my thoughts while reading included: "This book has the most in-depth analysis of a social environment and the relationships in it I've come across in ages". And then "Oh hey - the panopticon! Bec told me about that when she studied it in uni (visual culture?)". And then "Hang on - why is Frankie doing all this?". Then "This is almost like the famous scene in which the narrator of Middlemarch goes 'Dorothea - But why always Dorothea?' and drags the poor unwilling reader into some kind of sympathy for the one character he or she least wants to have any feeling for". And then "Oh - yes, this on Frankie's discovery of P.G. Wodehouse: 'Wodehouse's jubilant wordplay bore itself into her synapses like a worm into a fresh ear of corn."'.
I think what's especially interesting about the book to me is that it's so generic-boundary pushing in such a seemingly unpretentious, unselfconscious way. And I was looking just now through the bits of paper I'd stuck in, and seeing again the quite lengthy descriptions of the 'neglected positives' ('gruntled' was the first one Frankie discovered in the passage from Wodehouse) I suddenly was reminded of Connie Willis, in the way the book isn't afraid to go off into long descriptions of some fact or other that relates to ideas being explored, but in a light-handed way. Unlike Willis, I think, Frankie herself isn't a character you engage with entirely - although this isn't in any way a failure of the writing, but rather the very complex character Frankie is. And I don't think one single stereotype about the very privileged kids in the very exclusive boarding-school she attends was ever followed. Amazing.
So in sum - I'm attempting even less than normal to 'review' this book, and just saying I thought it was fantastic.
Anyone who's hung out here for any time will know I'm a serious fan of Sherwood Smith's (and I was saying it before I'd heard of LJ, let alone had her join my flist), so when I heard that A Posse of Princesses was out AND heard a little bit about it (the dealing with NOT being The Chosen One?!), I knew it was a must-have. Although I wasn't sure whether it would be a *bit* on the younger side for full enjoyment. But as it turned out, I thought it was just lovely - funny and sweet and still thoughtful and the magic was cool too. I know I'd have loved it to bits myself when I was young, and am almost positive it would have been a big hit read to my two when they were younger. Very hard to say anything without giving away too much, but I loved the way the romance was neither dismissed as automatically silly because Rhis was 16 (16 year olds very often ARE romantic!), nor automatically accepted as being a fully mature relationship just to give a nice ending. And loved the fact that being heftily talented didn't mean you're locked by Fate into being The Chosen One. And the letters at the end were wonderful... Made me a very happy reader again.
I'm afraid I can't quite say the same about Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend, though I was sure this was going to be totally my cup of (non spec-fic) tea. And the author seems a great person and everyone else in the YA-reading world loves it, so I'm sad but not hugely guilty about not raving about it. A lot of the prose was on the over-written side for my taste, and though I'm sure most readers would find it easy to engage and sympathise with the book and protagonist, I found it oddly anxious somehow. And it's first-person narrative, only goes for a week (a WEEK? For a 17 year old to get over a two-year relationship with someone she really loved?) and she would be anxious after being told her boyfriend was gay, but it somehow slides into the narrative and her best friend Emily floats the 'theory' that it's not all a matter of polarities and maybe everyone's not just gay or straight, but that seems to get discarded pretty quickly and Belle (narrator) is said to be 'the most pathetically hetero girl in the school' and she certainly spends a *lot* of time talking about her next crush's big thighs and muscles and big hands and says his car 'smells like him, deodorant and soap, clean and musky, but with a hint of burnt marshmallow mixed in. It smells like man. Dylan never smelled like man. He smelled like pine woods and grass.' I felt - well, I felt relieved, reading that the Boov (next book) have 'seven magnificent gender. There is boy, girl, boygirl, girlboy, boyboy, boyboygirl, and boyboyboyboy.' Ahhh, that's better!
Though I'm still not 100% sure what I made of The True Meaning of Smekday, all told. It won the Cybils award for Fantasy and Science Fiction (elementary and middle school) and there were times when I was reading when I loved it and times when I thought the Message Parallels were too heavy-handed for words, and times I cheered on the young kid saving the planet (literally) by herself - with the help of the lovable J.Lo, of course - and times I thought she was too tough and indomitable to be stomached and times it seemed - I don't know - to fall down on the Other isn't all Bad (or all Good or all ANYthing) messages it had just been pushing home. I was interested to see Farah saying that she's got 20 other books on her shelves that are just like it, as I wouldn't have read enough of the type to know. But I did enjoy it all the same. (And the Cory Doctorow book she reviews right *after* Smek Day? Oh, how I can't wait for that!)
First off: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart. I love the Ruby books (The Boyfriend List and The Boy Book), as they're funny, intelligent, got the hint of the old problem in there to keep it feeling serious enough for my inner puritan (Ruby gets panic attacks and is sent to a downright wonderful therapist at the beginning of the first book) and they're intelligently funny. (Yup, I know I already said that, but I felt like saying it again.) Dramarama was excellent and the incredible John Green said it was the best book of the year (did I invent that? Hope not!), but I couldn't enjoy it as much for reasons having nothing to do with its merit. (Stage performances - tryouts? At which you get stage fright and do badly??) I've been waiting for The Disreputable History for a while now, and though I had no idea exactly what type of book to expect, couldn't have anticipated the book it is in any way. Not sure I can write anything sensible about it either - I mean, my thoughts while reading included: "This book has the most in-depth analysis of a social environment and the relationships in it I've come across in ages". And then "Oh hey - the panopticon! Bec told me about that when she studied it in uni (visual culture?)". And then "Hang on - why is Frankie doing all this?". Then "This is almost like the famous scene in which the narrator of Middlemarch goes 'Dorothea - But why always Dorothea?' and drags the poor unwilling reader into some kind of sympathy for the one character he or she least wants to have any feeling for". And then "Oh - yes, this on Frankie's discovery of P.G. Wodehouse: 'Wodehouse's jubilant wordplay bore itself into her synapses like a worm into a fresh ear of corn."'.
I think what's especially interesting about the book to me is that it's so generic-boundary pushing in such a seemingly unpretentious, unselfconscious way. And I was looking just now through the bits of paper I'd stuck in, and seeing again the quite lengthy descriptions of the 'neglected positives' ('gruntled' was the first one Frankie discovered in the passage from Wodehouse) I suddenly was reminded of Connie Willis, in the way the book isn't afraid to go off into long descriptions of some fact or other that relates to ideas being explored, but in a light-handed way. Unlike Willis, I think, Frankie herself isn't a character you engage with entirely - although this isn't in any way a failure of the writing, but rather the very complex character Frankie is. And I don't think one single stereotype about the very privileged kids in the very exclusive boarding-school she attends was ever followed. Amazing.
So in sum - I'm attempting even less than normal to 'review' this book, and just saying I thought it was fantastic.
Anyone who's hung out here for any time will know I'm a serious fan of Sherwood Smith's (and I was saying it before I'd heard of LJ, let alone had her join my flist), so when I heard that A Posse of Princesses was out AND heard a little bit about it (the dealing with NOT being The Chosen One?!), I knew it was a must-have. Although I wasn't sure whether it would be a *bit* on the younger side for full enjoyment. But as it turned out, I thought it was just lovely - funny and sweet and still thoughtful and the magic was cool too. I know I'd have loved it to bits myself when I was young, and am almost positive it would have been a big hit read to my two when they were younger. Very hard to say anything without giving away too much, but I loved the way the romance was neither dismissed as automatically silly because Rhis was 16 (16 year olds very often ARE romantic!), nor automatically accepted as being a fully mature relationship just to give a nice ending. And loved the fact that being heftily talented didn't mean you're locked by Fate into being The Chosen One. And the letters at the end were wonderful... Made me a very happy reader again.
I'm afraid I can't quite say the same about Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend, though I was sure this was going to be totally my cup of (non spec-fic) tea. And the author seems a great person and everyone else in the YA-reading world loves it, so I'm sad but not hugely guilty about not raving about it. A lot of the prose was on the over-written side for my taste, and though I'm sure most readers would find it easy to engage and sympathise with the book and protagonist, I found it oddly anxious somehow. And it's first-person narrative, only goes for a week (a WEEK? For a 17 year old to get over a two-year relationship with someone she really loved?) and she would be anxious after being told her boyfriend was gay, but it somehow slides into the narrative and her best friend Emily floats the 'theory' that it's not all a matter of polarities and maybe everyone's not just gay or straight, but that seems to get discarded pretty quickly and Belle (narrator) is said to be 'the most pathetically hetero girl in the school' and she certainly spends a *lot* of time talking about her next crush's big thighs and muscles and big hands and says his car 'smells like him, deodorant and soap, clean and musky, but with a hint of burnt marshmallow mixed in. It smells like man. Dylan never smelled like man. He smelled like pine woods and grass.' I felt - well, I felt relieved, reading that the Boov (next book) have 'seven magnificent gender. There is boy, girl, boygirl, girlboy, boyboy, boyboygirl, and boyboyboyboy.' Ahhh, that's better!
Though I'm still not 100% sure what I made of The True Meaning of Smekday, all told. It won the Cybils award for Fantasy and Science Fiction (elementary and middle school) and there were times when I was reading when I loved it and times when I thought the Message Parallels were too heavy-handed for words, and times I cheered on the young kid saving the planet (literally) by herself - with the help of the lovable J.Lo, of course - and times I thought she was too tough and indomitable to be stomached and times it seemed - I don't know - to fall down on the Other isn't all Bad (or all Good or all ANYthing) messages it had just been pushing home. I was interested to see Farah saying that she's got 20 other books on her shelves that are just like it, as I wouldn't have read enough of the type to know. But I did enjoy it all the same. (And the Cory Doctorow book she reviews right *after* Smek Day? Oh, how I can't wait for that!)
