Baby Be-Bop, by Francesca Lia Block

Posted on March 6, 2010 by Thistle

71331This is a book about a boy coming to terms with his sexuality in a world that doesn’t want him around. It’s about love, it’s about hate, and it’s about understanding who you are. The message is a beautiful one: Any love that is love is right.

I first heard about this book last summer before I went to the ALA conference. Up in West Bend, Wisconsin, a certain library system is dealing with a ridiculous lawsuit. Four guys calling themselves the “Christian Civil Liberties Union” wants this book pulled from library shelves. Not that unusual, really, but what makes this case particularly unique is that they are also asking for legal permission to publicly burn all the library’s copies of the book as a way to tell authors not to write this sort of “filth.”

Honestly, I wanted to read this book during Banned Books Week last fall, but then I discovered that 1) it was part of a series and there were four other books that came before it, and 2) it was a hardcore science fiction novel. Now I have no idea where I got that second impression – more on that in a minute – but Debi let me know that this could easily be read as a standalone book. I now finally got around to reading it, with Debi’s encouragement.

It’s a short book, more of a novella really, barely over 100 pages. The writing is very simple, almost kid-lit in tone though not in subject. I did go into this thinking it was going to be a sci-fi book, and I’m generally not a big fan of sci-fi, so I was leery. When the main character, Dirk, falls in love with another boy, Pup, I was convinced that Pup was really an elf or something because his slightly pointed ears were mentioned more than once. When I heard about Dirk’s grandmother’s house, I thought the whole thing was literally gingerbread-cottage-y. Yeah.

Just in case anyone else got the idea that this was sci-fi or fantasy: it’s not. It’s actually more like historical fiction, in a good way. You guys know I rarely like historical fiction, but as I said in a recent Sunday Salon post, I like it when the historical setting is merely the background on which a plot is laid. This story takes place about 30 years ago, with flashbacks to older times than that. Other than cultural references, it could have taken place in any time. That’s the sort of historical fiction I like!

This book gave me barely a glimpse into the world of its characters. They passed in and out of my mind like a dream. They told their story, almost fairy-tale-like, and slipped off into their own world again. The good, the bad, the indifferent – it was all immutable. It was hard for me to know what to make of it, but after a few days and a second read-through, I think I really liked it. It feels like something I cannot quite capture, cannot quite wrap up into my arms and pin down. Pup with his pointed ears may not have been an elf, but the whole book has a fairy-like feel to it, similar in tone to what I imagine A Midsummer Night’s Dream is meant to feel like (yes, I admit it, I haven’t read that one, sorry!).

Once again, the people who want to ban (or burn) this book have created something desperately out of proportion. Are there hard words in this book? Yes, but not as bad as some. Do bad things happen? Yes, but again, not as bad as some. Is homosexuality discussed? Yes, though in terms of love, not sex. I was expecting something much, much stronger to have garnered that specific reaction up in Wisconsin. I should have known better…

I think I need to get the whole Dangerous Angels collection now.

Posted in 2010, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged , | 1 Comment

M, by Jon Muth

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Thistle

9780810995222I’ve been sick the last two days and no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to read. In a last ditch effort to do something other than watch TV and movies, I pulled out M by Jon Muth. M is a graphic novel adaptation of the classic German Expressionist movie M, by Fritz Lang and Thea Von Harbou. I love M, as well as Fritz Lang and Thea Von Harbou in general. I saw this book back in late Dec/early Jan. Originally it was released in four volumes in 1990, but was recently put together in a single hardbound volume. The artwork is much like Shaun Tan – not in style, but in structure – which lets the picture tell the story more than any words on the page. In fact, the pages with words (done in cheesy, early-computer-style bubble format) actually detracts from the story in my opinion.

M is the story of a pedophile and child murderer in early 1900s Germany. Kids disappear in seemingly random places throughout this town, only to be found murdered later. No one knows who the murderer is. The police are worn out but determined, citizens are panicking, and the underground network of criminals are irritated that this murderer is giving them a worse name than they already have. Everyone is out looking for this man in their own way.

I can hardly talk about the graphic adaptation without talking about the movie as well. While it’s not my favorite of Lang’s movies – that honor belongs to Metropolis – I was very impressed the first time I saw it. Peter Lorre plays the child murderer, and unlike all his English-speaking roles, he isn’t just a goofball with funny eyes and a weird voice. My favorite part of the movie is a long monologue he gives towards the end (I won’t tell you what about or the circumstances surrounding it). It’s brilliant, and it’s what really stood out for me in this movie.

The pacing is very different than modern day crime/psychological thrillers. I know this wouldn’t be a movie everyone would like. It lacks a score, so that sometimes long scenes are shot without any sound at all. M was Lang’s first non-silent film, in the era where talk films were just beginning to be produced.

The graphic novel was a tribute of sorts to the movie. Muth used people he knew to shoot photographs in similar scenes to the movie, and then he painted the panels of this adaptation from those photographs with an elaborate set of tools. The entire process is described at the end of the book. Most of the pictures are in black and white with subtle sepia hints, there are a few places where he adds color to highlight specific points of the panel. While I don’t think the adaptation captures the same emotional flow of the movie (though that could be because I was really, really sick when I read it), the artwork is gorgeous. Some of the most beautiful paintings I’ve ever seen. This is definitely a book I want to keep and read over again.

I watched the movie again this morning. Jason got it for me for my birthday, and it was nice to sit down and see it for the second time. It was especially nice to watch it right after reading the graphic adaptation. I would definitely encourage people to watch the movie and if they enjoy it, to read the adaptation as well.

And now it’s time to go take a nap…

Posted in 2010, Adult, Visual | Tagged | 1 Comment

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by JK Rowling

Posted on March 3, 2010 by Thistle

Prisoner_of_Azkaban_coverThe Prisoner of Azkaban is one of my two favorite HP books, along with the Half-Blood Prince. I never get tired of it, no matter how many times I read it. This is Rowling at her best, in writing, in characterization, and in plot. I won’t summarize. Most people have read it anyway, and if they haven’t, either they don’t want to or they might one day. For those in the latter category, I wouldn’t want to ruin it.

I read the hardback version of the book, as I’ve always read the paperback version before. Again, still looking for discrepancies between the two texts. I want to say first that I must have been a copyeditor in a former life because in combing the text, I found three places with copyediting mistakes, all pertaining to endquotes. Either the endquote wasn’t there when it should have been (once), or there was a misplaced endquote (twice). These mistakes were NOT caught between hardback and paperback versions, though, and they are the same in both books.

There WAS one text discrepancy between the two, though. I wasn’t sure which volume the discrepancies would start to show themselves in, but apparently it’s in Prisoner of Azkaban. Page 65, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley are arguing about whether or not they should tell Harry about Sirius. Mr. Weasley says:

You know what Harry and Ron are like, wandering off by themselves–they’ve ended up in the Forbidden Forest twice!

Of course, that’s not true. Harry has been in the Forbidden Forest twice by this time, but Ron has only gone once. The statement is corrected in the paperback edition:

You know what Harry and Ron are like, wandering off by themselves–they’ve even ended up in the Forbidden Forest!

This is the only difference between the two texts that I found.

So that’s it for month three of this little Harry Potter comparison! See you guys next month with my least favorite book of the series, The Goblet of Fire.

Note: Review date is only an approximate of when this book was read/reviewed in 2010.

Note: Originally read in 2005 and many times since.

***
– November 2014 throwback review

Posted in 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012, 2014, Children's, Prose | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Big Over Easy, by Jasper Fforde

Posted on March 1, 2010 by Thistle

6628Humpty Dumpty falls off a wall to his death, but was it murder or suicide or accident? That’s up to Officers Jack Spratt and Mary Mary of Reading’s Nursery Crime Division to determine, if fellow officer and top story detective of Amazing Crimes, Friedland Chymes, doesn’t steal the case from them first.

Rumpelstiltskin and illegal straw-to-gold operations. A neurotic mad scientist psychologist who grafts kitten heads on haddock bodies. A religious/political man similar to the Pope called the Jellyman. A verruca the size of a small child. A womanizing 4.5 ft tall egg-man. Suicide by cookie dough mix. This is just a small spattering of what you’ll find in The Big Over Easy.

Jasper Fforde = genius. Seriously. Who else can throw together coherent plotlines that weave everything from a giant beanstalk to an immortal Titan to Dr. Caligari to the infamous crime boss Giorgio Porgia into a single story? Not to mention the dig at himself as actress Lola Vavoom retired from her movie career after her appearance in the disastrous movie, The Eyre Affair.

It’s almost impossible to think how to review this book! There’s just so much in it, both plot-wise and otherwise. I admit, at first I wasn’t sure about this book. I prefer the literary references from the Thursday Next books to the nursery rhymes and fairy tales of this world. By about halfway through the book, though, I was sold. I slowed down – I’d tried to read it too fast – and then I started laughing. Fforde is a master of irony and humor.

But even in all the comedy, there are lots of little issues touched on, the same as in the Thursday Next books. The detectives in Reading not only have to solve their crimes, but have to solve them in a way that’ll make good stories for readers. All sorts of weird laws have been enacted, such as dog-walkers can be fined for finding bodies because that’s too cliché and overused. Chymes – who is very much like Captain Hammer – is very good at solving crimes in intricate, ridiculously-complex ways, which makes good stories, even if they are embellished a bit. Jack Spratt, on the other hand, gets no respect because he has no flare for intricate solutions and instead just solves crimes. I find this emphasis on publicity-comes-first crime-solving very reminiscent of some of the awful techniques of modern media – anything to get a story (Dateline immediately comes to mind).

There are other things touched on here, but many of them would involve spoilers so I’m going to keep my mouth shut on them. Point is – the book is more than it seems to be, although one could read it for the mystery and humor alone. It reads like an old detective novel more than a modern murder mystery, which I loved. As with other Fforde novels I’ve read, I’m sure I missed 3/4ths of the references, but I loved the ones I did catch.

All in all, this was a fun book once I slowed down and let myself read it at a more leisurely pace. I love Fforde’s wit, humor, and the amazing way he manages to bring SO MANY THINGS into a plot and yet make them all completely coherent/relevant.

Quick question for the Fforde fans out there: In the last chapter, the first two sentences have a bunch of spoonerisms in them (“hother’s mouse” “mull foon” etc). They seem to have nothing to do with the book itself, just randomly thrown in. I seem to remember seeing something like that in one of his other books, equally random and unrelated to the plot, but I could be remembering wrong. Is this normal for Fforde? Or is there something about this book that I missed, that would make said spoonerisms relevant?

Posted in 2010, Adult, Prose | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Picture of Dorian Gray (graphic novel), by Oscar Wilde

Posted on March 1, 2010 by Thistle

dorianThis is the graphic novel adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. It’s adapted by I.N.J. Culbard (illustrator) and Ian Edginton (text). It follows the exact same plot as the original book, so my summary is for Dorian Gray in general.

Dorian Gray is a beautiful and naive young man who has caught the eye of a famous painter. The painter, Basil, paints a portrait of Dorian that captures his beauty, innocence, and youth. By the time Dorian sees it, however, he’s already had his head filled with ideas by one Lord Henry, a cynical man who speaks his mind on whims and never means anything he says despite what the people around him assume. In a moment of madness, terrified that he’ll lose his youth, Dorian wishes that the portrait will grow old and ugly while he himself remains young and beautiful. He sells his soul this way, and indeed as Dorian sins and becomes corrupt, his innocent exterior stays the same. This painting, locked away, hides his secret.

I love this book. I’ve read it multiple times now and each time I love it a little bit more. It’s a slim volume and very easy to read, with only one tedious section where Dorian’s collections are all listed out individually. I understand why that section is there but it’s still hard to get through. Anyway, I wanted to read the GN adaptation because the book is one of my favorites. I was a little worried after Rebecca reviewed it as horrible a little while back, so I decided to try it in-store before buying it. Especially after my experience with the modernized adaptation of Crime & Punishment. Yuck.

To my happiness, I loved it! The graphic novel held the essence of the original and enhanced it. I wasn’t fond of the art style, but it certainly got the point across. Reading it was like reading an old friend, even though it was my first time for this particular adaptation.

I do have to say it would be better to read the book before reading this GN, because the adaptation does remove a certain element of Lord Henry’s character that I feel is really important to the book. In the GN, he sounds corrupt and base. He’s a woman-hater that believes in all the opinions he gives. In the book, however, it’s obvious from the beginning that Lord Henry is really more of a devil’s advocate. He doesn’t believe a word he says – he doesn’t even remember what he’s said if you leave him alone for any amount of time. He talks. He likes to talk, and what he says is just the way he works out his thoughts. But people take what he says as his absolute opinion. I love Lord Henry – he’s a lot like me in that way. He’s my favorite character in the book and the GN doesn’t do him justice. There isn’t enough subtlety in his character.

But, having read the novel enough to know Lord Henry’s personality, it was fun reading him in this format. I could hear the tone in which he says everything. Like I said before, this GN is a compliment to the novel rather than a way to get out of reading it. It enhances the book. It’s a definite keeper and I’m glad I gave it a chance despite my worries.

Posted in 2010, Adult, Visual | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Galapagos, by Kurt Vonnegut

Posted on February 28, 2010 by Thistle

galapagosGalápagos is a sort of dystopian-science-fiction treatise on evolution. The world has sunk into depression, unknown bacteria are making women infertile, and WWIII is about to break out. Ten people – one male and nine females – end up on a cruise ship and are stranded on the Galápagos island of Santa Rosalia. Their offspring eventually become the only people left on earth, and evolve over the next 1 million years until they are far more animal-like than human. The story is told in little chunks zigzagging through time by a narrator whose story is not known until near the end.

The first book I read by Vonnegut was Slaughterhouse 5, sometime back in high school. I was too young at that point, it think, and I just didn’t get it. I mean, I understood the plot, but the meaning went way over my head. I decided it was time to give Vonnegut another try and I’m glad I did. I really enjoyed Galápagos. I loved the way the story was woven together in little chunks. While I didn’t enjoy the frame story (narrator’s story) as much, I appreciate why it’s there and how that allows us to see the evolution of humans over a million years. The book felt like an appropriate tribute to Darwin, and ironically I think I learned more about the theory of evolution from this book than I ever learned from school.

One thing I hadn’t expected when I started reading Galápagos was a side-theme of intimacy between two women. Two of the passengers on the ill-fated cruise, a pregnant Japanese woman and a blind woman, pair off once they arrive on the island to raise the Japanese woman’s baby together. After their daughter grows up and leaves to live in her own place, the two women – who have never been separated in more than 20 years – commit suicide together by drowning. They hold hands and walk into the water together. While there is no implication of a sexual relationship between the two, there is this wonderful portrayal of love between them. It was so unexpected and yet beautiful.

Posted in 2010, Adult, Prose | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Liar, by Justine Larbalestier

Posted on February 24, 2010 by Thistle

NewLiarThere will be absolutely no spoilers, not even a hint of them, in this review.

Micah is a liar. Nothing she says can be trusted. And yet she swears that she didn’t kill her boyfriend Zach. She had nothing to do with his death. Do you believe her?

Whatever you think this book is about – it’s not. I had heard that this book was full of twists. I had heard it blindsides you and leaves you reeling. I avoided all reviews and refused to listen to anything that might give away the twists. And still…I wasn’t prepared.

Last night, I read through the Part 1 of the book. The whole time I kept thinking, “Okay, where are the twists? This seems all pretty straightforward to me.” Part 1 ended on a bit of a stretched note, so I thought, okay, maybe that was the twist. No. The news wasn’t on yet, so I thought I’d read just a bit more. Page 1 of Part 2, I got smacked in the face. I didn’t see it coming. Despite all the hints, I never even got close to suspecting.

Funny thing is, awhile back I actually got THIS EXACT SAME IDEA for a novel I wanted to write. Not the lying part, but the stuff introduced in Part 2. I started mapping out the idea, fleshing it out, but realized I didn’t know enough about the subject/genre to write it, and I put it aside. I’m glad I did. I’m glad I didn’t invest any real time into it, because I might have been quite upset now. As it is, I’m crossing the idea off my list and grinning wholeheartedly because what Larbalestier did was brilliant. BRILLIANT. It was so much better than anything I could have done with the idea. She took everything I wanted to do and made it into something amazing. I can already tell this book has a strong possibility of becoming one of my favorites of the year.

I want to talk to someone about the book! Someone who’s read it so I don’t have to worry about spoilers. I told Jason last night, after reading the beginning of Part 2, that I needed him to read it. Normally if there’s something I want to tell him about a book he’s not interested in reading, I’ll just describe it, but that’s the funny thing about Liar: If I just described it, it would come off incredibly cheesy and dumb. But the way it’s written, it’s anything by cheesy. It rides the line so well! And by the end, you really don’t know what to think. It’s hard to even know how to classify the book!

Liar has been sitting on my shelf since I got the ARC at ALA last July (yes, I have the crappy cover with the white girl on it, which makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE Bloomsbury, even less sense now that I’ve read the book). I don’t know why it took me so long to get to it – perhaps the 300 other unread books on my shelf have something to do with it – but I am so glad I finally sat down and gobbled it up. I’m also glad I decided to give Larbalestier a second chance. How to Ditch Your Fairy was not my favorite book. It was okay, but it was a bit young for me and I wasn’t real impressed over all. Liar, on the other hand, is amazing. It’s a definite WIN for the 2nds Challenge, with my personal goal to read 2nds books only by authors that didn’t impress me the first time around.

Posted in 2010, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

African Sojourn, by Uwe Ommer

Posted on February 23, 2010 by Thistle

african sojournI read this book as a companion to my Enchantment: Senegal book. It’s a book that is supposed to highlight the beauty of the female African body. West African, specifically (but not just Senegal). Unlike Native, the photography book that I read last month in my Brazil studies, this book didn’t feel beautiful or striking at all. It felt cheap. The pictures felt horribly stereotypical (because African women hunt naked with a rudimentary bow and arrow, right?) and on top of that, they were more p*rnographic than beautiful. There were actually pages torn out by former patrons who checked this out of the library, which is really disturbing to me. I generally like nude art, but I found this book to be in poor taste. Maybe it was just the time period – it was published in the mid-80s and feels very dated – but I didn’t like it at all.

Posted in 2010, Adult, Visual | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Posted on February 17, 2010 by Thistle

imagesIn a panic after seeing his ex, Nick turns to the stranger beside him at a bar and asks her to be his girlfriend for the next five minutes. Though her immediate instinct is to say no, Norah decides this might help her find a ride for her drunk best friend. She pulls Nick into a kiss.

After reading and not really liking Naomi & Ely’s No Kiss List by this same duet of authors, I was a little worried about Nick & Norah. I went into it with a bit of trepidation. That trepidation disappeared almost immediately. This is one of those books that I just want to say, “ZOMG this book is so good wow read it now.” I’m guessing that’s not really a good review, though.

What can I say about this? It was raw, it was real, it captured all the emotions and language perfectly. This is one of those books that I want to hold up and say, “See? This is what tension feels like! This is how to write a good kiss and/or sex scene! This is how to accurately portray teenagers! This is the way to make a setting feel real!” Everything was splendid.

I think that in the past I’ve given off this impression that I’m a prude. I say things that make it seem as if I dislike books with sex, crass language, etc in them. This book should prove that that isn’t true. I’m not a prude. I don’t like books with pointless, gratuitous, or badly written sex scenes. I don’t like language (“bad” or not) that sounds awkward and out of place. When these things are done well and have a reason for being in a book, I don’t mind them at all. They have to make sense and not be a ploy for sales technique. The author has to be honest with the reader, the subject, and themselves. Cohn and Levithan do this perfectly.

There was really only one thing that bothered me in this book. Without this little thing, I’d consider the book to border on perfection. I don’t like the two chapters where Norah is trying to decide if Nick’s gay because he smells like cologne, uses cherry Chapstick, and knows the name of designer shoes. I auto-rebel against that. The whole debate she has with herself comes very late in the book which makes it pointless as well as offensive. I wish that had been edited out. But other than that one tiny thing, this is a great, great book. Read it!!!! 😀

But don’t read it if you’re bothered by language, sex, drag queens, or boys making out with other boys. You won’t like the book then. It’s full of this stuff. Every single negative review of this book that I’ve seen has been from people bothered by the very frequent use of the word “fuck” or by the lack of “morality” in these teens.

Posted in 2010, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged | 2 Comments

The Metamorphosis (graphic novel), by Franz Kafka

Posted on February 15, 2010 by Thistle

MetamorphosisMy long-time readers know that I love Kafka. The Metamorphosis is probably my all-time favorite novella. After loving the brilliant adaptation of The Trial to graphic novel last fall, I knew I had to get my hands on this GN adaptation. Of course, the artist was different and the way he approached the story was very different from the artist of The Trial. I preferred The Trial, but that doesn’t mean this one was bad. Kafka and his surrealism really lends itself well to the graphic form.

For those unfamiliar with The Metamorphosis (is there anyone??), the main character, Gregor Samsa, wakes up one morning to find himself strangely transformed into a giant insect. The book is complex and full of symbolism. It’s one I can read over and over again, and have. Each time I get something new out of it. This GN does a great job pulling all the important parts of the story to visual form, as well as weaving in symbolic imagery. My favorite was from the very last page: a shot of a Gregor-like bug on a light pole as the train carrying Gregor’s family drives by. It’s those little details that make this book strong.

And a little sidenote: this GN is supposed to be drawn in the style of Winsor McCay, one of the first surrealist comic artists.

Posted in 2010, Adult, Visual | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment