Summer and Bird, by Katherine Catmull

The first review I wrote of Summer and Bird got eaten by crappy coffee shop internet. That's okay. It was pretty crappy writing. I'm out of practice. But this is my first book of 2014, a book I waited over a year to read, so long that my reserve at the library expired before I could actually get my hands on the book. Lucky thing Christmas came up when it did. I need to write about this book because that always helps set things in my mind and I don't want to forget this one. So here goes: take two.

Summer and Bird are sisters, just twelve and nine years old, respectively, when they wake up one morning to find their parents gone. (My sister and I used to pretend our parents were gone. It sounded so glamorous when we were little, to imagine fending for ourselves. Of course, if we'd ever woken up to find ourselves abandoned, we'd have been every bit as scared and confused as Summer and Bird.) They follow the few clues left to them--or they think they follow them, because they aren't very clear--and find themselves in the land of Down, where they wind up on separate journeys, following separate paths. Beyond that I don't want to get too specific, but I will say I've never read a book that felt quite like this one before. It reads like a fairy tale, both lyrical and unflinching. It's a book that resists simplicity--as one character puts it, "Nothing important means just one thing." 

And none of the characters are just one thing--in fact, all are pulled in at least a few directions. Bird, the youngest, is torn between guilt over the role she may have played in her parents' disappearance, and her ambitions to break away from her family and rise above them. Summer has her own guilt, and is torn between feeling responsible for her younger sister at the same time as she resents her for being the seemingly special one. Even their parents are torn, their mother between her true self and the life she's built with her family; their father between his wife and his children. I just love this. It feels like my whole life these days is about being pulled in different directions. Is my first responsibility to my friends or my family (or, shocker, to myself)? Is it more satisfying to feel capable and responsible and ADULT, or to say "fuck it" to the mess and the laundry and just feed my soul with books and writing and art and occasionally too much bourbon? I don't for a second think these are the biggest problems facing anyone in the world. I mean, come on, I am privileged to be having these dilemmas. But they're still issues I'm grappling with, and I so, so appreciated Catmull's ability to show so many sides of the same story, with compassion and understanding for all the characters. 

Because these are characters who do wrong. They all make some bad decisions throughout the book--they're not just unwise but occasionally selfish, veering into morally sketchy-as-hell. But they aren't demonized for it. Just when you think you've got a character figured out, Catmull switches things up and you're looking at the picture from another frame. Nothing important means just one thing. 

So if you want to read a really lovely book--seriously, prepare for some gorgeous brain-pictures here, people--that's also creepy and epic and funny and sad...this one's a good bet. Happy 2014.

On Rainbow Rowell

So I kind of slipped that last entry in without comment. I know it's been a while. What have I been up to?

You know, everything that comes with a new job...

But now I'm back! I missed having this little space on the internet. Today I want to talk about Rainbow Rowell, one of my new favorite authors.

So it seems like everyone in the world has read this already, and I'm kind of late to the party. Mostly that's because I wasn't really expecting to like this book. For some reason, I was anticipating that the two title characters would be pretentious, kind of self-consciously clever in a grating way. I have no idea how I got this impression since I have yet to see an unfavorable review of this book. But I was expecting to find Eleanor and Park unlikeable as characters. 

Go ahead and roll your eyes as you wait for this totally shocking reveal: 

The Raven Boys, by Maggie Stiefvator

I didn't start this book with the highest of expectations. I didn't have low expectations, exactly, hadn't heard anything bad about the book...I just couldn't really remember how it had wound up on my to-be-read list in the first place. It happens; I put a dozen books on my list a week and can't get to them all right away. But I have to say, I'm so freaking happy I finally got around to this one.

I read a lot of YA books. Obviously. And I like almost all the ones I read because my current reading philosophy says life's too short to waste on books I don't enjoy reading. But I still had a shock reading this because the characters really got to me in a way that doesn't happen often. I'm a fast reader, which is why I need to get back into blogging, so I can give myself a chance to reflect on what I've read. If left to my own devices, I'll blow through books like a tasty package of crack-Oreos and be left wanting more more more. Nothing sticks. Except to my...hips. (This metaphor just died. Can you imagine walking around with stacks of books attached to your hips? This is why I need writing practice.) ANYWAY, I swear I had a point, and it's that, much as I enjoy most of the books I read, it's rare for me to fall absolutely head over heels in love with the characters. I hadn't even realized how rare it was until it happened to me with The Raven Boys. Because I love these characters. Every one of them is flawed in real, consequence-having ways. And they make lots of bad choices. They behave badly. But we root for them anyway. They're the real deal. Stick-to-your-ribs characters.

Let's break this down a little with as much plot summary as I can bear to give: There are psychics. Lady psychics. Awesome lady psychics, living their own lives and being their own complicated human beings and not just brushed aside as "the grownups." There's Blue, the lone un-psychic who just happens to have grown up under the prophecy that when she kisses her true love, he'll die. (Blue kindly requests more information, but the cosmos aren't budging. Pesky unhelpful cosmos.)

And then there are the Raven boys, attending the nearby school for capital-R Rich Boys. Gansey's the leader, charming as hell except when he's being unintentionally insulting. He's all obsessed over finding the possibly-mythological sleeping king Glendower. (He has his reasons.) Oh, and he might be dead in a year, but Blue couldn't get any more info on that, either. There's his roommate Ronan, who's all corners and acid and surprises. And Noah, the other roommate. It wouldn't do to forget Noah. And Adam, the poor one putting himself through school, heartbreakingly determined to make his own way.

And there's magic. Lots and lots of magic, the kind that gives you chills through its pure weirdness. The other book that springs to mind that gave me a similar feeling is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which I mean as the highest compliment.

I loved the book. I loved seeing how class played into the boys' friendships, especially Gansey and Adam. I loved the examination of privilege. I loved the raven named Chainsaw. I love that these characters are still so strong in my mind a week after I read the book. I love that I loved it's follow up book, The Dream Thieves, just as much. About the only thing I don't love is that now I have to wait for the next installment. But for once, I'm not worried that I'll forget to keep an eye out for it. I can't wait to see what happens next.  

Too many dicks on the dance floor

...Except substitute "books" for "dicks," and, um..."various surfaces in my apartment" for "dance floor."

This is what my apartment looks like. Dancing, singing...books.

Does this happen to anyone else? I think it happens to me when I'm having a particularly strong run of good reads. I start to get cocky. And I crave more and more, until I honestly think I can read ALL THE BOOKS at pretty much the same time. And I check out half a dozen from the library and wind up sending most of them back unread, or half-read, because my focus gets fucked when I have too many good books staring at me.

And today it will get worse because I'm getting Neil Gaiman's new book in the mail, and Stephen King's Joyland, and I still haven't finished my books from the library (or the last several from the road trip), but I literally don't know how to hold a new Neil Gaiman novel in my hand and not read it. I don't think it can be done. And I'm avoiding all my favorite book blogs today because they've all got reviews of it and I don't want to be spoiled. I basically need to take care of all my errands and productive things before the mail comes, because once it gets here, I mean to be Occupied.

But anyway! In the interest of not letting myself stagnate too much on the blog front, I thought I'd share this article. It's titled "Feedback From James Joyce’s Submission of Ulysses to His Creative Writing Workshop," and there are some gems in there. 

"Show us how these characters process memory, language, abstractions, and the urban landscape through stream of consciousness, don’t just tell us."

"Caught some allusions to The Odyssey. Nice."

"“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” So true."

...and hee! Literary humor ftw. Check it out, if you're so inclined.

 

I'm the One that I Want, by Margaret Cho

Sometimes I am just not on board with those dust jacket reviews. I mean, seriously..."Savagely funny?" "Refreshingly, uproariously raunchy?" "Funny and compelling?"

I can only assume The New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times and San Francisco Chronicle were talking about Margaret Cho's stand-up routines and that they didn't read this book. Because this book? Not funny. Not unless you're the type to crack up over someone spilling a vein onto the page. No, this book is painful. Margaret Cho is unflinching in telling about her experiences with racism, body-shaming, sexual assault, drug and alcohol abuse, and a career that took years to get off the ground (due in part to racism, body-shaming, and drug and alcohol abuse).

But the painful stuff is easily the most compelling and best-written part of the book. The rest has its funny moments, but falls far short of her stand-up routines without her voice and comic timing to boost it into the stratosphere.

Homeland, by Cory Doctorow

I've been sitting on my review of Homeland for the better part of a week now. I'm feeling kind of intimidated, to be honest. Because there's a lot to say about this one. And what with all the nifty NSA surveillance coming to light at the moment, the book feels particularly prescient.

It's the sequel to Little Brother, which was probably my favorite road trip read. We meet up with narrator Marcus Yallow about two years after the events of the first book. We find characters (and, you know, the world) still reeling from those events. Marcus is clearly suffering from PTSD after being tortured, and the country is in economic turmoil. Kind of like reality, except worse.

Joe Hill's N0S4A2

I adore Joe Hill. I love his comic book series Locke and Key. I think I love it even more than Sandman, and that's saying a lot. I think his collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, is brilliant, and I don't particularly like reading short stories.

I saw Joe (we're tight like that, so I can call him just Joe) speak at Beachwood Library last year. My mom used to work with the librarian who had set up the talk, and this librarian told us Joe was really nervous, because he hadn't spoken in front of such a big crowd before.

That's fucking endearing right there.

This all sounds like I'm gearing up for one big BUT about his newest novel--he's so great, but this book was shit--but I'm really not. I loved it.

A lot of reviewers are making much of the fact that this book contains a lot of overt references to his dad's books. And there are a bunch--I counted references to It (I mean, obviously--it's my favorite book of all time, so I wasn't about to miss those), The Stand, The Dark Tower series, homages to Christine...I don't have to specify who Joe Hill's dad is, right? It feels like something everyone should know now. Saying it would be like specifying that Daniel Radcliffe played Harry Potter in some films when he was a kid. We all know.