Ash by Malinda Lo

I just finished Ash by Malinda Lo. It's a lesbian retelling of Cinderella. Which is a cool concept. But it's a bit of surprise!lesbianism, which is something I don't really enjoy.  I'm not a fan of any sort of surprise!relationship in a book, no matter where on the spectrum of sexuality it falls.  It doesn't matter who's falling in love with whom, I need to know WHY these people are falling in love.

And in this book, I don't understand why Ash (the Cinderella character) loves Kaisa (who is basically the prince here). Quite literally, the moment of falling happens in one sentence. Ash doesn't even THINK about Kaisa that way until someone plants the idea in her head. The relationship between Ash and Sidhean (the fairy godfather in this story) is far better developed. It happens in a distanced, fairy tale sort of way, but you understand their attraction to one another. And the writing implies that the attraction is mutual.

The one thing this book had going for it was its views on sexuality. In this society, homosexuality was normalized--that is, nobody made a big deal if you liked people of the same gender. It was just another option. And it's implied (though somewhat unconsciously; it doesn't seem to be a very developed idea, as if Lo herself didn't know what she was talking about) that sexuality is a spectrum, not an either/or choice. It's quite clear that Ash has feelings for both Sidhean and Kaisa. Which is something that happens in real life.

However, Lo seems to completely ignore these ideas. Instead of recognizing that sexuality is not black and white; that you can have feelings for multiple genders, and that there are other definitions of sexuality between gay/straight/bi, Lo goes with a standard definition. Ash is a lesbian. That's all there is to it. That's how Lo views it. But the thing is, the text doesn't support that characterization. It's like Lo was trying to fit Ash into a box, and the fact of the matter is, she doesn't. And that's the way a lot of sexuality works: it doesn't fit neatly into a box. It's okay to have radical ideas about gender and sexuality. Just because it's a lesbian retelling doesn't automatically make it revolutionary or insightful. If the idea here is to normalize homosexuality (which I'm all for), then we should judge the book and the relationship itself on how well it is constructed. Which in this case is not good.

Without proper character development, this lesbian storyline comes off as a cheap trick. And what's more irritating is that Ash is completely helpless. Just because the main character is a lesbian doesn't mean the story is progressively feminist. What I mean is that Ash is saved by someone else, both a man and a woman. It doesn't matter that the twist is that she's saved from poverty by a woman; she still has to be saved. She still needs to be protected. How is that challenging prevailing ideologies about gender?

One thing we talked about a lot in my Teen Library Materials class (which is where I read this book) is the need for quality books about LGBT issues.  Serving LGBT youth is considered one of the critical needs of YA librarianship.  And that's why I had such high hopes for <i>Ash</i>.  It seemed like a book that had a higher level of understanding of the concepts of gender and sexuality.  But instead of going outside the box, Lo forces the story into a standard format, and the story completely falls apart. The lesbian aspect of this story comes off as a cheap trick, and I don't think anybody takes too kindly to a writer using a hook like that to draw in readers, especially when it can be such a touchy issue.

Thumped

*gasps for air*
Yes, yes, I'm still alive, I promise. And been doing lots of reading! I've just been buried under a mountain of schoolwork. And yes, while I should have finished the memoir I'm supposed to have read by tonight at 6, I decided to read something else:

Thumped by Megan McCafferty

I didn't realize it until just now, but the one other time I blew off end-of-semester work for a book was when Perfect Fifths (another Megan McCafferty book) came out. So it says a lot about my love for this woman.

So Thumped is the sequel to Bumped, which follows twin sisters, Melody and Harmony, in a world where a virus has made it such that most people become infertile by age 18. So, in order to keep the population up, teenagers are encouraged to get "bump" and "preg" for profit. Harmony was raised in a religious community called Goodside, where traditional values prevail, and Melody was raised to be millionaire pregger. When the two meet for the first time, both Melody and Harmony are forced to re-examine your value system.

While reading Thumped, I often felt uneasy, and I was unsure if I really liked the book or not. But once I realized that while it may be billed as a dystopia, it doesn't fit into that traditional category of YA dystopias. Oh sure, many of the same elements are there, but there's something very different about Thumped.

First, a random aside: the slang in this world is extremely well developed. While I love dystopias, I usually find the imaginary slang in them to be a bit forced. But the slang in this series is flows very naturally. It takes a few chapters to get used to, but once you do, it really adds to the setting rather than detracts from it like slang in other dystopias.

Now to the good stuff...
What separates Thumped from other dystopias is how closed in it feels. Chapters switch between Melody's and Harmony's point of view. And as things happen around them and they're confused by it all, so are we. The story is very personal: unlike a lot of dystopias, it's not focused on criticizing some aspect of our current society. True, the story was inspired by all the media attention the girls on 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom were getting, but to say that teen pregnancy is glamorized in this country is an overstatement. Anyways, my point here is that Thumped is not some grand commentary about how depraved society has gotten. It's about what happens when people live in a world that is the completely opposite of what it was a generation ago. The Virus in the story is fairly new (less than 50 years old), so there are generations of people who still remember the way things used to be. Melody and Harmony are part of a generation who need to figure out their place in a changed world. So the story is not about taking down a Big Bad, merely changing the way people view the world. It's not about the end of a revolution, but the start of one. Society doesn't change totally overnight.

And what I love is that the ending of Thumped is somewhat ambiguous. I mean, you come away knowing that the characters have made the right choices and that certain things are going to change, but there hasn't been some magic cure to the Virus. Harmony still knows she's got a long way to go. Melody's not entirely sure what her life is going to be now. But that's okay. Because that's how life works. And there's still enough of a sense of newness about this world that you as the reader are satisfied because you know there's room to grow. There's optimism, and for such a personal story, optimism is enough.

Both Bumped and Thumped are quite different from a lot of YA dystopias out there. And that alone makes them worth the read.

Let's Try This Again, Shall We?

So last year was a bit of a bust, with me clocking in at only 39 books read. Okay, so it was a major bust, I'll admit that.

But I am ready and willing to try this bad boy again (this will now be my third try, but I really am taking that "if at first you don't succeed" adage to heart). Is part of my motivation the fact that I'm in two reader's advisory courses this spring and that means reading a LOT of books for class? Why yes, yes it is. I'll take motivation anywhere I can find it, thank you very much.

No rules this year. As long as it's a novel, it counts. Manga and comics count.

Let's do this.

2011 Totals

2011 Book List:
1. Mockingjay - Suzanne Collins
2. The Seer and the Sword - Victoria Hanley
3. The Healer's Keep - Victoria Hanley
4. Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen
5. Across the Universe - Beth Revis
6. Life After Genius - M. Ann Jacoby
7. Queen of Babble - Meg Cabot
8. The Goose Girl - Shannon Hale
9. The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown
10. Delirium - Lauren Oliver
11. The Crimson Thread - Suzanne Weyn
12. The Storyteller's Daughter - Cameron Dokey
13. The Diamond Secret - Suzanne Weyn
14. Matched - Ally Condie
15. Howl's Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones
16. House of Many Ways - Diana Wynne Jones
17. Bumped - Megan McCafferty
18. Jane - April Lindner
19. Divergent - Veronica Roth
20. Abandon - Meg Cabot
21. Smokin' Seventeen - Janet Evanovich
22. The Misted Cliffs - Catherine Asaro
23. Overbite - Meg Cabot
24. The Dawn Star - Catherine Asaro
25. The Fire Opal - Catherine Asaro
26. The Night Bird - Catherine Asaro
27. Eon: Dragoneye Reborn - Alison Goodman
28. Eona: The Last Dragoneye - Alison Goodman
29. The Last Little Blue Envelope - Maureen Johnson
30. The Invention of Hugo Cabret - Brian Selznick
31. Incredibly Alice - Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
32. Not Without My Daughter - Betty Mahmoody
33. Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares
34. Incarceron - Catherine Fisher
35. Goliath - Scott Westerfeld
36. Modelland - Tyra Banks
37. Explosive Eighteen - Janet Evanovich
38. Wonderstruck - Brian Selznick
39. Encore - Joan Lowery Nixon

Total: 39


Best Book: Sisterhood Everlasting
Although I do have to give a shoutout to Modelland. It was far and away the most...interesting thing I've ever read. In years. It was kind of like a mixture between Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It certainly was quite a trip.

Worst Book: Jane. In 2011, there is no excuse for keeping your crazy wife locked up in the attic. None. Also: mahogany lined box of condoms. It actually happened.

Disappointing Books:It'd have to be a tie between Eona: The Last Dragoneye and Delirium. Bot had interesting story ideas that interested me, but they fell flat. Eona wasn't a bad book, but something happens to a character in the last 25 pages of the book that a) is completely contrary to the path they'd been on for the previous 600 pages and b) completely undermines the strength of the main character. Not to mention that it displays a relationship with SERIOUS trust issues as being "solid." Um, no. And Delirium makes the grade simply because a single editing error on page 16 completely undermined the theme of the book.

Book I Hated with a Fiery Passion: Mockingjay. Character assassination and discarding plot simply to get out an anti-war message. And the laziest writing I think I've EVER read. You don't have a character pass out THREE TIMES during separate but equally important plot points. Just abysmal.

So...erm...quite a bit short of the 100 goal. But I'm okay with that. I can always try again, and I plan to do just that.

Jane Eyre (film)

So I've been wanting to see the newest adaptation of Jane Eyre basically ever since I heard they were making it. It had a limited release, so I didn't get to see it in theatres, but I finally got around to getting it at the library. And considering that I was like, 350th on the list, I've been waiting a LONG time to see this movie.

I was very prepared to fall in love with this movie. For one, the trailer seemed like it was going to accurately capture the gothic feel of the book. Jane Eyre was (and still is) creepy and scandalous. I mean, so much so that Charlotte Bronte had to publish it under a different name because she thought people wouldn't believe a woman wrote it (well, for other reasons too). I'm not saying I didn't love the movie, not at all. But Jane Eyre is my second favorite book in the world (the first being Gone with the Wind). As an adaptation of the book, however, I think this film is only so-so. Granted, it's a long book, so some stuff has to go when a film is being made. But the whole Blanche Ingram storyline is completely glossed over, and I think that cuts out quite a bit of characterization of both Jane and Rochester. I love any scene where he's trying to glean information from Jane either about himself or about her life. That's how he falls in love with her, after all.

However, the acting in this movie is FREAKING BRILLIANT. Mia Wasikowska is homely-but-pretty enough to make a good Jane, and she displays the right balance of strength and insecurity that is Jane Eyre. I think in movies there's a tendency to make Jane too confident and secure in her decisions, and that's just not the case in the book. Jane does doubt herself. While she may have bursts of brilliance, every move she makes is not as deliberate as some film versions seem to suggest. Mia's portrayal of Jane shows her vulnerable side without losing that inner strength that endears a lot of people to Jane Eyre as a character. Side note: Mia has the TINIEST waist I've ever seen. I sort of noticed it when I saw Alice in Wonderland, but damn. She looks amazing in this movie.

And let's face it, Dame Judi Dench is a perfect Mrs. Fairfax. She's the right amount of motherly and nosey for the part. Plus, even though she's a major star, she plays in the background perfectly. With so much gravitas, it would have been easy for her role to have been greatly exaggerated, but it was played with just the right amount of subtlety. Nice touch.

And Michael Fassbender. Oh my God. I will forever picture him as Mr. Rochester now. People gave Fukunaga flack for casting Fassbender because he's "too pretty," but I disagree. Yes, Fassbender is good looking, but he's not classically handsome--and that's how I've always pictured Rochester. Not classically handsome, but not necessarily ugly. Interesting looking--and Fassbender most certainly is just that. Not to mention that Fukunaga's cinematography and styling make it so Fassbender has those rough edges that Rochester is known for. Fassbender's portrayal of Rochester is SPOT ON. I mean, he captured the spirit of Mr. Rochester to a T. He's brash, abrasive, possessive, and, at the appropriate times, a little sketch. And his passion for Jane is SO believable. The scene where he begs Jane to stay is just...oh my God. It's exactly how I pictured it in the book. I mean, they even include Rochester's veiled threats to make her stay. Wasikowska is no slouch in this scene, either--her physical portrayal of Jane's conflict is perfect. Once again, I think there's a tendency to play Jane here with ABSOLUTE resolve that she's leaving, but Jane clearly has her doubts. Wasikowska plays it as if Jane just barely has the strength to do it, which I think is more true to the character.

On a side note: I was poking around on the IMDb page for the film, and I noticed a reviewer saying they were disappointed that the movie didn't include the Wide Sargasso Sea interpretation of Bertha. This is something I do not agree with at ALL. While I love the concept of Wide Sargasso Sea and I've heard great things about the book, considering it part of the Jane Eyre canon just isn't right. Is Rochester as innocent in the whole Bertha incident as he makes himself out to be? Well, probably not. But Jane Eyre is Charlotte Bronte's book. Any portrayal of the story containing elements from outside the novel is not an accurate reflection of the work--even if those elements make sense in the context of the story.

It's one of the reasons I'm not fond of recent film or book interpretations of Dracula. People seem to have latched on to this idea that Meena and Dracula have this extremely sensual, intense love affair. And true, there is some sexuality between those two in the book--but she's not love with him. You don't yell "Unclean, unclean" after someone you love touches you. And I think people underestimate just how much Meena loves Jonathan. I honestly believe she wouldn't do that him. She just wouldn't.

Anyways, I digress. I enjoyed the movie. It's just about 2 hours long, and I didn't feel like my time was wasted. And the interactions between Jane and Rochester, the sparks that fly between them...it's all so authentic. I never once doubted their love for each other, which is something I've done in other film adaptations of the book. There was commitment to and understanding of these characters, and it really shined through. While I don't necessarily agree with all the story cuts that were made, the acting alone makes it well worth the watch.

34/100: Sisterhood Everlasting

So. It's been two months and 13 books since I last posted. My reading pace has picked up a little, but I sincerely doubt I'll make 100 books by December 31st. But I'm okay with that.

So what has raised me from my silence. This gem:


Now, I read Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants when I was about 15 or 16, right when it first came out. And I dutifully followed the series, but by the 4th book, I was getting a bit tired of it all because I felt like the characters were making the same mistakes and having the same crises all over again.

So admittedly, I was skeptical when I found out about about Sisterhood Everlasting. So skeptical that I actually didn't even know it existed until I saw it on the Most Wanted shelf at work. Not knowing a new book in a series I've read is coming out is highly unusual for me. But I thought that for old times sake, I should give it a try. It takes place 10 years after Forever in Blue ends, but I still wondered, were these girls going to be making the same mistakes AGAIN?

Turns out, yes and no. The Sisterhood does make some of the same mistakes they did before, but in the context of this novel, it all makes sense. Life should be messy for these women. This is where they're supposed to be in life.

I'm genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed this novel. It is easily the best (new) book I have read all year.

I don't know, maybe it's because I'm in my 20s now and I can relate to these girls in a way I haven't been able to before. How sometimes we can be lost, even when we're supposed to be adults. Sisterhood Everlasting spoke to me in a way I haven't been spoken to in a very long time.

The whole time I was reading the book, "Arms" by Christina Perri was playing in the back of my mind. It fits the theme so perfectly. Like, eerily so:


This book. This book.
It broke my heart and put it back together again.
It does something completely ballsy in the first 50 pages and makes it work.
It was the first book in a long time that I started and finished in one day.
I loved and devoured every single word.
I haven't felt this content after finishing a book in a long time.

I love it all :D

Books Read: 34/100
Currently Reading: Between books

21/100: Smokin Seventeen

So for a very long time, I was very much against reading anything by Janet Evanovich. Mostly it was because of my library page weirdness, and since she has about a million books on the shelf, I had to hate her on principle.

But one day in the summer before I went to college, for reasons that I for the life of me cannot remember, decided to try her out. I read One for the Money in about two days, and I was hooked. I managed to get though books 2 and 3 of the Stephanie Plum series, but after that I started college and well, you know how that goes. It wasn't until the beginning of last year that I decided to make it my goal to finish the series. That was when I decided to get on the reserve list at the library for Sizzling Sixteen, and that gave me the incentive to catch up. So from January to June, I read the first 15 books in the series. So by the time I actually read Sizzling Sixteen, I was a little burnt out on the whole series. But Janet Evanovich only releases one book in this series per year, so I figured a year's absence would make my heart grow fonder. Or at the very least, less burnt out.

As the release of Smokin' Seventeen approached, I'll admit, I got excited. It's nice to have a new book to look forward to! But when I read it, I began to realize something: I'm kind of over it.

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed the book. Had a few laughs here or there, and I was interested in the main storyline (although I had the killer picked out practically the page after he was introduced, but this isn't Agatha Christie here or anything, so I don't really expect to be surprised by the mystery of the book). But...it was just a little same old, same old.

What's irritating me about these books is that they're all starting to feel like the same book. Stephanie gets herself into trouble and doesn't listen to advice from anyone, she and Lula try to catch an FTA or two and it goes horribly awry, Grandma Mazur causes trouble at a funeral, and Stephanie continues to agonize over the great Morelli vs. Ranger debate. Oh, and whoever the killer is decides to try and kill Stephanie because she's too nosy. To be quite honest, books 11-17 all run together because they're essentially the same book. Look, I give all the credit in the world to Janet Evanovich. She has unfailingly released a book about this character every year since 1995. That's impressive. She's discovered a formula for literary success, and power to her for that. But it seems like she's stuck in a rut. She's sticking to that formula to a T.

And honestly, I'm getting a little tired of it. Stephanie makes no progress a person. And look, I get that this isn't Literature with a capital "L", but that doesn't mean there can't be some development. Is Evanovich afraid that if she actually makes Stephanie get married or have a kid or move in with someone that the series is going to go to hell? The Moonlighting Curse does not not apply to books. Seriously, I'm real tired of this Morelli vs. Ranger crap. Stephanie is a grown-ass woman. Choosing a man shouldn't be this hard--especially when Morelli is the most obvious choice on the face of the earth.

OH MY GOD, THE STEPHANIE PLUM SERIES IS SUFFERING FROM THE REVERSE MOONLIGHTING CURSE!!! (The Reverse Moonlighting Curse, by the way, is when a series suffers when the two leads DON'T get together. See: the first half of season 6 of Bones). Seriously, if I have to deal with this high school relationship dramaz for another book...this whole relationship is just stagnating. If I want to read the exact same book over and over, I'll just read the first one, because that one is still, in my mind, far and away the best one.

I guess the last straw for me was the ending of this book: Stephanie has received a plane ticket to Thailand and enough money to purchase a second ticket for the man of her choice. She decides who she's going to take with her, but we as the readers don't know who that is. Which would be a great cliffhanger and all, if the EXACT same thing hadn't happened at the end of High Five. Seriously. At the end of that one, Stephanie has called a man over to her apartment, but we don't find out who it is until the next book. So that just means that 11 BOOKS LATER, she's in the exact same place. Dear God in heaven. I thought that maybe it seemed worse for me because I had read all the books in a row, but then I realize it's probably worse for people who have been reading the series since the beginning (having watched Bones from the very first episode, I can attest that the longer you've been waiting for something to happen in a fictional setting, the more frustrated you get when it doesn't happen. So I can only imagine).

It's this same reason that I've kind of gotten away from the Shopaholic series by Sophie Kinsella. I really enjoyed it in the beginning, and even though each of the books has a completely different scenario, they actually all have the same plot. Becky never learns any semblance of self control. I mean, even just reading the synopsis for Mini Shopaholic, I can tell that it's going to be the same story: Becky can't help herself, and this gets her into all kinds of trouble with Luke, but in the end she pulls it all together and saves the day. At the beginning of the series, Becky was poor and living in a crappy apartment with no boyfriend, and now she's married with a kid. But she's still doing the EXACT same things she did back in the day? You can see how that would be frustrating.

Sigh. Like I said, I still enjoyed the book. But I'm starting to feel like I'm only reading the Stephanie Plum series out of obligation instead of because I actually WANT to. At the very least, I'm only glad there's one of these a year. Okay, not THIS year, since Explosive Eighteen comes out in October, but still. Maybe it's because I'm still coming out of my bitter old lady reading mood. But it's still a little sad, because I reallly did enjoy the series quite a bit.

But I'm not giving it up for lost. Things can change. I mean, one can only hope.