Ashes ashes they all fall...

Reached - Ally Condie (Dutton Books, 2012)

Book One was just Cassia, Book Two introduced Ky's POV, so no surprise that in the final entry of the trilogy we get Cassia, Ky, and Xander. (As I was hoping for.)

Because I'm not in the mood for spoilers, there isn't a whole lot to share without giving away too much. But the rebellion against Society comes to a head, and things get out of control, and somehow -- like in all great revolutions -- three teenagers are the key to saving the world.

If you're really in it for the love triangle, which I'll admit I may have been, you may find yourself feeling a little unsatisfied. On the other hand, you get to face the exciting possibility that instead of Cassia being torn between two very different loves, both guys may decide on a future that moves on without her. [For Vampire Diaries watchers, this is akin to wanting Stefan to run off with Caroline and Damon to run off with ... well, someone, and Elena to sit around wondering how she somehow stopped being the center of attention. And don't we all kind of want that?]

Anyway, super propulsive read. I kept trying to find ways to sneak in chapters despite the fact that I spent the whole weekend running around doing other stuff. (And finishing up yet another book - post coming shortly....)

And it gets a little more complicated

Crossed - Ally Condie (Dutton Books, 2011)

I think what I liked most about this sequel to Matched is that it adds narration by Ky. This allows us to track both teens as they try both to survive and to make their way back to the other, which occasionally is pretty cute, and also stressful. But more importantly, we get inside Ky's head and learn his secrets before Cassie does. Because in addition to everything else going on, there is trouble brewing for the couple. Cassie wants to be part of the Rising; Ky has his own reasons for avoiding it. (Erin thinks that parts of this sound quite a bit  like The Hunger Games.) And while Xander only makes a brief appearance in the book, his presence is enormous. Which leads me to believe that maybe if I ever manage to get a copy of Reached, we'll get some Xander-narration too. Very exciting.

Teens love a good romantic triangle

Matched - Ally Condie (Dutton Books, 2010)

Would it even be a young adult novel without a love triangle? Which reminds me of my first young venture into romance reading. When I was younger, there was a series of YA historical fiction that always had a young woman in some interesting time/place. And against the backdrop of History, said heroine had to choose between two suitors: one stable, the other exciting. While it seemed like Mr. Exciting usually won out, Mr. Dependable got the girl often enough too.

Anyway, before I get too bogged down in wondering about the elements of a good triangle (Who is Mr. Dependable in Twilight? Jacob? Edward? Um, no.) let me move back to Condie. Love story PLUS dystopian future. And believe me, if you go on Goodreads you will read no end of opinions about the various other dystopias that helped inform Condie's world. (People get cranky on Goodreads.)

Long story short. Cassia lives in a future where the Society plans everything out for optimal results - when and whom to marry, where to live, where to work and in what profession, and more. Crazy enough, she's "matched" with someone from her area, her best friend. Except on the little microcard with his info, another face appears - and yet another guy she knows. And, like any good 17 year old, she finds herself drawn to this second, false, match. Which leads her to question everything she's ever known.

This story had its ups and downs. I wasn't crazy about Cassia or the writing. But it had enough momentum to keep me going, and I requested the second book in a hurry.

(PS - The Society relies heavily on statistics. Which I have to admit, sounds a little awesome. But even I recognize that probabilities work exactly because they are only that: probabilities.)

But I don't want it

This Beautiful Life - Helen Schulman (HarperCollins, 2011)


Meet the Bergamots. First Liz(zie), a trained art historian who became increasingly mom-first, and now, in NYC, mom-only. Then Richard, whose career in academia seems on an unstoppable upward trajectory. And Jake, the teen son. Finally Coco, the spirited kindergartener. They are transitioning, with varying degrees of success, from life in upstate Ithaca to Manhattan.

And then there's a night with two parties. Liz takes Coco to a sleepover at the Plaza, where she (and the other moms) get totally wasted. Yay. And Jake goes to a party with his friends, gets sad when he sees the object of his affection with her boyfriend, gets drunk, and draws the advances of the young hostess. He allows her attention, until he suddenly doesn't. And handles it like most boys would, which is to say like a jerk.

And there you have it. A Saturday morning with two hungover Bergamots. Except then Jake's make-out partner creates an awfully graphic web video to prove that she's old enough for him. And then all hell breaks loose.

Listening to Slate folks discuss it (here), I was intrigued by their final conversation, a debate over why and how the single click of the "forward" button untethered everything. It's hard to say for sure whether all the fissures of Liz's dissatisfaction and Richard's growing impatience would have been evident had the plot been presented in any other way. The first page (plus) is a description of the video, and it looms over everything that follows, leaving the reader waiting in some amount of anxiety. As a result, I saw how while nothing was broken, neither was it particularly strong. But that's just me.

I grew less enchanted with the book as it went on. The characters just kept so firmly to their established patterns, wearing out some weird groove that made me more and more frustrated. And then, suddenly, Schulman wraps up. She flashes forward several years, so we know what shakes down from the crisis. And ends with a coda chapter, the teen ingenue all grown up, or more grown up. But it's weird, because we've never really met her before. And now, we're not quite sure who she is, or what to think about what she unleashed when she hit record on her webcam.

Could this be love?

I Think I Love You - Allison Pearson (Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, advance reader's edition)


I had quite the crush on NPH (I mean, obviously) in his Doogie Howser days. And I seem to remember several months of adoration for Christian Slater. But my teen passion was for an athlete, which somehow felt much different (to me) than loving a teen heartthrob. I jealously guarded my love for Paul Kariya, and didn't have to share him with the other hoards of teen girls.

But then, I could still identify with Petra and her girlfriends, and the way they felt about David Cassidy. That feeling that somehow he was reaching out directly to you, even as - in their case, at least - it was about the connections you make with the girls around you as well.

Anyway, so Petra has a new best friend, and they hover on the orbit of one of those stereotypical queen bees, who existed even in Wales of the 1970s, it turns out. Their bond: Cassidy, who helps them weather the storms of adolescence. The greatest storm though, arises from their misadventures trying to see him in concert.  At the same time, young college grad Bill turns out to *be* David Cassidy, or rather to channel his voice for one of those teeny-bopper magazines. This is hugely embarrassing, and yet it's his life.

Fast forward a quarter-century. Petra is mourning her mother, her failed marriage, and her inability to protect her teen daughter from the hurts that plagued her. But then she finds a lost letter, and a chance to go back in time, and maybe let her teenage self have the experience of a lifetime.

It's not just a love story between a man and a woman, or a man and millions of girls. It's also about love between friends, the complications of familial love, and the ways we tie ourselves in knots trying to be the "right" thing for the ones we love. I didn't know what to expect when I picked this up, but it was warm and comforting. A good find.

Lizzie Bennet in high school

Prom & Prejudice - Elizabeth Eulberg (Point, 2011)


I was reading some RA (readers' advisory) thing about new young adult fiction when I came across this title. And the description made me howl. At work. Lovely. My library didn't purchase it, but I finally came across one that did, and here we go.

I can't figure out if it's even possible to read this book without knowing the source material. Certainly it can't be as amusing. Longbourn is no longer the home of the Bennets, but instead a very posh New England boarding school, where prom is a BFD. Lizzie is a scholarship student. Jane & Lydia are sisters, but not Elizabeth's sisters. Bingley & Darcy attend the neighboring boys' school, named - naturally - Pemberley. Other references to the book pop up in unexpected places.

Eulberg has a difficult task adapting P&P for modern teens. The grand themes of the love story are as apt as ever: pride, an unwillingness to change initial impressions, misunderstanding, stubbornness about who we think we are and what we think we want.... all of these get in the way of true happiness. But actions and attitudes that make sense in the early 1800s seem bizarre in today's climate. Bingley & his sister, for example. Are brothers really that persuadable? And Lydia.... you can have a wild child today (easy enough) but how do you demonstrate how humiliating that wildness is? Can it really bring shame on a family?

Anyway, it's cute. But I'm afraid I would have hated it had I read it as a teen.

Face of a Revolution

Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press, 2010)

After waiting 3 months between The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, I waited about 10 hours before diving into Mockingjay. I mean, what is the point in being finished with the semester if you can't do things like that?

So.

A lot of this trilogy is about the indignity of being having no control over your life, of being a pawn manipulated for the entertainment of others. Of finding ways to live with integrity in this system, of being authentically yourself. (This does seem a little like being a teenager, doesn't it?) Katniss is particularly compelling because of what I have to call - although the term is so inexact - her naivete; she is capable of genuine independent and surprising action, but within a system of other actors that continue and continue to try to use her to meet their own ends. This does not change in the third installment. In fact, if anything it gets more brutal.

This book was the saddest of the three for me. I found it difficult even as I couldn't stop reading - and it was both good and bad that while I was reading the suspenseful trip through the Capitol, J was arranging (arranging?) a three-part harmony to "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah" - the juxtaposition was creepily appropriate. But it finally ends. And while I saw a few different ways in which Collins could satisfactorily conclude, I felt like this perhaps made the most sense. It was always what I wanted, more or less.

This was some of the most fun I had reading this year. I'll be recommending it for sure.

Back to Panem

Catching Fire - Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press, 2009)

For some reason that I won't try to understand, my library has far fewer copies of Catching Fire than of either The Hunger Games or Mockingjay. So - and since I was supposed to be concentrating on school anyway - I waited to request a copy, figuring that if one was free it was meant to be. Otherwise I was supposed to wait until the end of the semester.

But then I got impatient, and got on the list so that I would get the book right around the end of the semester. So as soon as I turned everything in last week, I got down to the important business of returning to Panem and finding out what was up with Katniss. (er, spoiler: she survives the Games in the first book.)

Anyway, there is more love-triangle drama. Of a decidedly tame - and thus adorable - type. Plenty of unexpected twists. And life in general there just sort of sucks. But Katniss remains this interesting, thoughtful, extraordinary young woman. And the other characters gain additional dimension this time around too.

The plot moves quickly, and I was surprised when I came to the end. Fortunately though, I had already snagged my copy of Mockingjay, so instead of waiting and reading something else, I will be finishing the trilogy this week instead...

BACK! (Also, more cheesiness)

The Awakening, The Struggle, The Fury, Dark Reunion (Vampire Diaries 1-4) - L.J. Smith (Harper Teen, 2007 - originally published 1991-2)

Nightfall andShadow Souls (Vampire Diaries - The Return 1&2) - L.J. Smith (Harper Teen, 2009 & 2010)

While I was busy being on hiatus and "not reading", I also decided that it was very important that I read a vampire book for Halloween. And then I figured I might as well read the whole series. Which is loooooong. At least the new ones. Smith, like Meyer & Harris, has let her vampire world get totally out of control. Whatever I read in Shadow Souls about demons and weird underground dimensions I still don't understand. And like Meyer, she just starts writing longer and longer books.

But they are entertaining. If you can look past all the ridiculousness and the sloppy editing, they are kind of fun. It was certainly all I was capable of taking on during the month of November.

(I like the show better though. Mainly for Damon.)

May the odds be ever in your favor

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press, 2008)

Unlike with many things that get overhyped, I was not "ugh, this is going to be overhyped," I was actually ready and eager to really enjoy it. (I actually felt this way about Twilight too, come to think of it, so many my natural skepticism falls away for YA materials. But talking about Twilight in a discussion of HG is unacceptable, so let me get back to the point.)

The hype is totally deserved. I was really blown away.

The prose is simple, and the plot arc is fairly predictable, but none of that really matters because Katniss has such a strong voice. The dystopic world is the right ratio of familiar and foreign, and just because you are pretty sure how the end will look doesn't mean that you won't be wrapped up in figuring out how to get there.

Oh yeah, plot. It's the future. An evil Capitol demonstrates its power over the outlying districts by forcing teens to compete against one another to the death. For the winner: glory, wealth, fame. For the 23 losers: well, duh. Katniss ends up there and the boy from her district is one with whom she has a past. And maybe a future? (By the way, if you can read this book without thinking about Bella, Edward, and Jacob, you are a stronger person than I am. But Katniss is about a zillion times more kickass than Bella, and there is no good correlation to be had among the men. At least not yet.)

Anyway, go. Read. Also, games. They are fun.

A heartbreaking work of ... oh, wait

A Complicated Kindness - Miriam Toews (Counterpoint, 2004)

I've already told the story of how excited I was to finally track down this book (with the correct author and title), and I even managed to related to hockey, since that's what I do. What I haven't done is actually write about the experience of reading the book.

It was like one extended sucker punch. I felt so protective of Nomi, so much desire to somehow fix it for her. And I couldn't. I mean, obviously, since Nomi is a character, but still.

Let me back up. It's the 1970s, in Canada, in a small Mennonite community not that far from the US border. Nomi, at 16, lives with her dad, because her mom and sister each left within months of each other, about three years earlier. Both father and daughter are broken, utterly. Nomi deals like you might expect: she fantasizes about New York, smokes cigarettes and pot, listens to rock music, has an older boyfriend, shaves her head, gets in trouble at school.

But it's more than that. Toews elegantly handles what may actually be the easy part: showing how the community and its sensibility has damaged her family. While Nomi isn't the only teen who rebels, clearly, she is further adrift than the others. What makes Nomi's story so powerful is that she is so often unflinching in her assessment of how things have fallen apart, and yet the ways in which she tries, when she needs to, to spare herself or her father or her best friend the worst of it. To be cliche about it, she reminds me of nothing so much as a wounded animal that's still trying to be tough.

I didn't even bother trying to note remarkable and representative passages. There's something on virtually every page. At random:

...every time I looked at it I was reminded that I was, at that very moment, not bleeding from my face. And those are powerful words of hope, really.

Hmm. The problem here is that they are too long to reproduce here, and they lack context. But to give you the best sense of it, here Nomi explains the impossible decision her father would have faced had her mother stayed in town in the face of excommunication: shun his wife, or leave his faith? "He was stuck in the middle of a story with no good ending. He had the same disease I had." You're not sure if you should pray, since prayer has done so much harm already, but if you did pray, you would pray for a cure, a way for them to find a suitable ending to the story.

It's how you play the game

Friday Night Lights - H.G. Bissinger
Cambridge, Mass.: DaCapo Press, 2004 (originally published 1990)

I've gotten attached to the tv show. After roommates and friends and some growing up, I was finally ready to appreciate a little bit of Texas. So when I heard the book was good, I bought it. And when I was searching for something different to read a couple weeks ago, I turned to it.

And then, maybe 80 pages in, I found myself in a convention center hall in Riverside. And looking out at a room full of excited youth who spent their weekend competing, having developed surprisingly strong bonds with their teammates as well as their fellow competitors. And at their parents, and coaches, who give so much of themselves to help their kids succeed. Suddenly I was not-quite-eight again, at my first feis. Or 10, in San Diego, winning my first championship. Or 14, at Nationals, when I was supposed to make the final round as a soloist and failed and when my team paid more attention to our placement compared to other California schools and so was pleased with a 6th place finish. Or 17, at my last Nationals as a competitor. My teammates... we were a family. I didn't always like all of them, and I know they felt the same. But on stage, I trusted them implicitly. I knew exactly where they would be at any given moment, without looking. I don't think you realize how unique and rare that experience is until it's over.

But back to FNL. It's about a football team, and the town the team props up. Their heroes, their goats, the ways football fits into a broader social and historical context, and the importance of being part of something bigger than yourself.

Over my time as a dancer, I learned what it was like to be the newcomer, to be the small Cinderella school. And I experienced life on top, what it was to be part of the elite school on the West Coast, expected to win. And I also felt the confusion that comes when you are supposed to win, going to win, and somehow you don't. So maybe, in my own way, I know what it's like to be a Permian Panther.

And even more so, I know what Bissinger points out that these boys learn: it doesn't last.

They [the former players] might come back to the locker room after a big game [...] and paw around the edges of the joyful pandemonium and it would become clear that it wasn't theirs anymore - it belonged to others who had exactly the same swagger of invincibility that once upon a time had been their exclusive right.

It had been my right once too. And maybe that's why I enjoy watching these mock trial teams trying to guess their standings by analyzing the matchups. And why I cared so much whether the Permian Panthers made it to State. And why I do care about the games that end most episodes of the tv version of Friday Night Lights. And why I want them to win, and to lose. To experience it all. Before it's the next generation's turn.

New books are just more fun?

See? Just the other day I wrote about how I have a hard time reading the books I actually own. And today I come across a Booklist blog on the same topic. Based on this WSJ article and its comments, Keir Graff muses on the to-read pile.

And yet I still buy and hoard books. I’ve joked–joked–that I’ll have to quit my job as a book reviewer in order to read books. But given that I won’t, I imagine I’ll spend my first months of retirement doing math, dividing the number of pages per day I can read into the number of years I think I have left–and weeding my thousands of books to read accordingly.

Jesus, I hadn't even thought about doing that math. I need to get on this.

But it's mildly reassuring to remember that I'm not alone, b/c we all have more books to read than we ever will read. And we all let books sit for far too long. I think I might be unusual in that I am more likely to use the "But I will like it so much I just want to save it for a little longer" excuse. But in the end, it is still an excuse. And one that gives me time for re-reading Emma and watching deliciously bad teen shows.

Okay Twilight

So the Facebook application "Pieces of Flair" may have gotten its inspiration from Office Space, but I sometimes wonder if it would manage to keep going were it not for Twilight, Stephenie Meyer's crazy-popular young adult vampire series. (I would post some, but it kept making the margins all funny, and also some of them seem to need spoiler alerts attached. Suffice it to say, "Team Edward" "I'm in love with a fictional vampire" and "I'm sending this to you because I needed more points for Twilight flair" are popular.)

I don't remember when/why I decided I would have to get around to reading these. Maybe it had to do with my teens. Maybe it was my way of punishing myself for all the times I have mocked my mom for her vampire craze. Or some sort of cruel irony since I missed the last young adult novel phenomenon that was Harry Potter. Anyway, doesn't really matter. The point is, last Friday I came home from the library, big book in hand, and only wondering a little if the librarian was smirking at me.

Twilight is back at the library, so I don't have a copy nearby to help with this post. (On the other hand, I do have New Moon, a fact about which I am not proud.) It is a ridiculously fast read, by the way. I am sure that someone could do a better recap than this, but here we go: Bella moves from sunny Phoenix to rainy Forks, WA to live with her dad. And she falls in love with a vampire, who may or may not want to eat her. And hijinx ensue. Well, not exactly.

To my mind, clearly the best part of the novel is the "will they or won't they?" aspect to Bella and Edward's relationship. I believe that Meyer knows her Jane Austen well, and was not surprised when Bella breaks out a copy of the collected novels. Edward is very much the Austen hero: wicked smart, extremely honorable, and tortured by his own imperfections. (This may be a coincidence, but as in Austen, any declarations of love are also oddly embarrassing for this reader, who feels both as if she is intruding on something private and wanting to correct the lovers - er, are you sure you want to say it that way?) Yet, unlike legions of Facebook users, I don't feel about Edward the way I feel about Mr. Darcy or Mr. Knightley. (And given that the character is 17 going on 107 or whatever, that's probably not a bad thing.)

So, as far as teen girls go, I totally get it. (Do teen guys read Twilight? Anyone have statistics for me?) Since the protagonists are teens, I imagine it has limited adult appeal. Vampire buffs can get their fix from other series, and romantics will probably seek out something with more sex. But it's awfully charming, and a little addictive - hence Book 2 on my couch and Book 3 somewhere in transit between libraries. I will try to put off Book 4, since really? There has to be delayed gratification somewhere along the way.