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i quit

i quit

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there has been some brouhaha on twitter regarding a lovely slate article that says adults should be embarrassed to read young adult novels.
“These are the books that could plausibly be said to be replacing literary fiction in the lives of their adult readers. And that’s a shame.”
you know what’s a shame? that it took me 3 weeks to read 50 pages of infinite jest because i canNOT get into that book. i have tried. it does nothing for me. that i cannot read anything written prior to 1900 because it just bores me to tears. literary fiction authors i do like? steinbeck and hemingway. o’brien. they write short sentences.
“Most importantly, these books consistently indulge in the kind of endings that teenagers want to see, but which adult readers ought to reject as far too simple. YA endings are uniformly satisfying, whether that satisfaction comes through weeping or cheering.”
what is wrong with a satisfying ending? i hate that most stephen king novels are on the edge of unsatisfying at their ends. i gave “gone girl” 4 stars instead of 5 because of the crappy ending. i loved that “the goldfinch” actually managed to pull off a plausible, satisfying ending. on the other end, “the book thief” (YA) had a pretty unsatisfying ending. my mom does not read any book that doesn’t have a happy ending. she says, why waste her time.
“But mature readers also find satisfaction of a more intricate kind in stories that confound and discomfit, and in reading about people with whom they can’t empathize at all. “
the only book i gave away because i hated it was because i hated every single character in the book. (the memory keeper’s daughter.) i have told people to stay away from it. now, there is something to be said for intricacies; “gone girl” is miles ahead of “divergent” when it comes to intricacies, and my brain likes to make the connections as they come. i could also argue that “looking for alaska”, YA, is more intricate than the “wool” series (adult novels) or a whole slough of romance novels.
the author lambasts “the fault in our stars” throughout the article because that’s the big movie coming out based on a YA novel. apparently she read it (probably against her will), and thought it was neat, trite, and eye-roll-inducing.
in the spirit of john green*, i leave her this:  “When adults say, ‘Teenagers think they are invincible,’ with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we ARE. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. Like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing.”
*author of TFioS, whose books i started reading while he was still underground. i’m hipster, y’all.
EDIT: OMG how could i forget to mention the MOST DISAPPOINTING ENDING TO A BOOK EVER, and it was a YA novel – mockingjay. take that, boring slate author.

book review: the dark tower

book review: the dark tower

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via http://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/grazer-says-the-dark-tower-is-back-on-and-coming-to-hbo/#!LDjf6
via http://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/grazer-says-the-dark-tower-is-back-on-and-coming-to-hbo/#!LDjf6

back when i was young and stupid and thought i wouldn’t like stephen king, i heard a lot about his “dark tower” series from a lot of people. number one thing being that it isn’t like his other books, and i would probably like it. (this before i realized he didn’t write horror all the time.)
so, in effort to get over my stupidity a few years ago (and GLAD I DID!!!), i bought my first king book, “the gunslinger,” and promptly read it. i was not entranced by the plot, but i was intrigued by his storytelling. a few months later i picked up “the green mile” and then all bets were off. i started reading mr king’s books left and right. WHY HAD I WAITED SO LONG???
but it was another year or so until i picked up the second DT book, and when i did, i was really turned off. i bet if i reread it now, it would be ok, but something just turned me off from that book at the time. i did finish it, but it took me a long time to pick up the third book – in fact, it was the end of this past march. and i flew through the rest of the series in a little more than a month, just finishing the final book last night.
contrary to popular opinion, i did not find anything wrong with the end at all. in fact, this series was the best vampire, zombie, time-traveling, parallel universe, post-apocalyptic, dystopian, auto-biographical, good vs evil, fantasy, sci-fi, literary-lifting, robot, meta, ego-stroking, writing advice/lesson, breaking of the fourth wall, deus ex machina, western, romance series i’ve ever read!
now, i’m going to go into some analysis and thoughts on the series, especially the last book, and if you plan on reading the books in the future, i suggest not reading the jump.
 
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mr king

mr king

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i FINALLY convinced one of my sisters to read a stephen king book. lord knows it took ME forever to pick one up, given that his name is pretty synonymous with horror writing, but, finally, after comparing “running man” to “hunger games” for jane, she picked it up, and LO AND BEHOLD who now is running to the library to borrow all of king’s books??
(i keep telling people that he doesn’t just write horror. that he’s an awesome storyteller. do they listen? noooOOOooo…welllll…eventually.)
anyway, jane wanted to know what she should read next, so i put together the list of all the king books i’ve read in order of how much i liked them. here you go!
1. 11/22/63
2. Green Mile
3. Under the Dome
4. Running Man
5. The Stand
6. The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon
7. Joyland
8. first three of the Dark Tower series (“The Gunslinger” is the first book i read of his, and i went wow he can tell a story. still need to read the whole series)
short stories i listened to on audiobook, both excellent:
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (obvs shawshank movie is based on this)
The Body (the movie “Stand by Me” was based on this)
I should add that none of these books are straight out horror. some have a weird sci-fi angle to them or are mystery, but i have read a lot scarier books than these. the next book of his that i’ll pick up is “the long walk.” i’ve heard good things about it.

Review: The Goldfinch

Review: The Goldfinch

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The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
stephen king liked this book? OK i’ll read it! he did, after all, recommend “the hunger games”.
this book has beauuuuutiful writing (although some egregious uses of a semicolon). donna tartt knows how to craft a sentence. unfortunately, from the perspective of a late-20s man writing about his teenage years? what teenage boy is perceptive enough to pick up that his therapist is most likely newly married with a baby merely from the ring on his finger and tired eyes? i don’t buy it.
plus it seemed like 20 lbs of writing in a 5 lb story. did we really need all that detail? this book could have been half the book and still have been lovely.
some favorite sentences:
“…a starry ache that lifted me up above the windswept city like a kite: my head in the rainclouds, my heart in the sky.”
“what if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? what if, for some of us, we can’t get there any other way?”
“a great sorrow, and one that i am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. we can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or whats good fro other people. we don’t get to choose the people we are.”

View all my reviews

librarians

librarians

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when i was in school, the library was tucked away in the corner of the stone building that faced the playground, half of it buried in the earth with windows along the ceiling that filtered sunlight into the book-filled recesses. part of the room was dedicated to desks and early 80s Apple computers where classes would sit for a half an hour playing number munchers or practicing keyboarding, and the rest of the room was divided into a small kids’ book section and everyone else’s books.
i was what you would have called a “voracious” reader throughout my gradeschool and high school days, mostly because i found myself on the fringes of friend social structures in my classes. plus i liked to read. i remember in first grade i was telling third graders how to read the petitions for weekly mass. (that might explain the friendlessness…) so in first and second grade, after i’d outgrown and become bored with the picture books and exhausted the small supply of non-picture books in the section, i asked the white-haired librarian (who i remember as quite cranky) if i could read the “Little House on the Prairie” books from the big kids’ section. there were a couple girls in the class whose parents had bought them the series and they had read them. i so wanted to read them! but the librarian, who was bent on keeping the rules, said i couldn’t read them because i was too young.
i must have complained enough, because my aunt colette, who was a school librarian in rochester, brought me a few books in the series that were remainders at her library: little house in the big woods and the last two in the series. i devoured those books. i must have read each of them ten times, and by the time i was able to actually use the better part of the library and check out the rest of books in the series, they were all falling apart.
today neil gaiman started #LibrarianAngel(s) trending on twitter. i thought of all the librarians i’d known through my life, and the one who was the best, even though she’d never checked out a book for me, was colettie. not only did she get me those remainders, she suggested books and authors on more than one occasion that i fell in love with, like robin mckinley and the polar express (back in the 80s!). she tended toward the weird, fantastic, and morbid; i’d like to think she and mr. gaiman would have got along swimmingly.
cheers aunt C, my #LibrarianAngel.

book review – The Ocean at the End of the Lane

book review – The Ocean at the End of the Lane

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The Ocean at the End of the Lane – Neil Gaiman
I’ve read most of Gaiman’s adult books – I really liked Anansi Boys and Neverwhere, but didn’t like Graveyard Book too much. I don’t think I have ever really really liked one of his books like this one. His books are always sort of odd, not quite fantasy/sci-fi, just weird. And while this one was definitely weird and had definite Gaimanesque plotlines, it read more like a fairytale to me than his other books.
Maybe it was because it was a little on the short side, or from the perspective of a child with adult situations, or because it all slips away at the end like myths and fairytales should. Maybe it was because I personally could relate to our hero, reclusive and stuck in a book. Maybe it was because while definitely Gaiman imagination, you realize it could be written by anyone – current or bards of past. Whatever the case may be, I loved this book.
*SPOILER ALERT*
The end just killed me – when he got his kitten back, and then found it alive and well on the Hempstock farm, then walking away to have his memories slip again.
**END SPOILER ALERT**
I would tell you if you think Gaiman is a little too weird for you, or if you are a Gaiman fangirl, read this book. Perfect for either.

wool

wool

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amazing! if you like your dystopian future catastrophic earth as much as i do, this book is for you. the most amazing part of it is that this is actually billed as an adult novel, and i could swear that if you just changed the ages of the main characters, it would read like a YA novel. not that there’s anything wrong with that; just goes to show that you shouldn’t shun YA.
i read the print version – the digital version was published in 5 novellas, and after much self-published success was picked up by a traditional publisher (thank god – otherwise my luddite butt wouldn’t have read it). i busted through the 5 novellas (printed as one book) in two days. i can’t imagine having to wait for each novella to come out! fast-paced, interesting, and a more than happy ending. what more could you ask for.

repost: books that are falling apart they've been read so much

repost: books that are falling apart they've been read so much

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Originally posted Oct. 15, 2006. Inspired by a suggestion from Jane.
These are the best kind of books.
New books are nice. You walk into the bookstore, all ready to buy a book that you’ve been thinking about the whole way there. Maybe you know what you’re going to get; maybe you don’t know. You walk into the bookstore and already you’re at ease. You become completely relaxed because the one thing you can totally rely on to be there in times of need, surrounds you.
Maybe you walk to the history section, the fiction, the cookbooks, the maps, the tech, the mental health, and the religious, whatever. You know what your mood is wanting. The rows of books await you. You slide your fingers along the spines, some shiny red, matte black, white letters jumping out, calling your name to read them. After minutes of poring over titles, authors, jacket flaps, you decide on a book. Perhaps you’re finished. Perhaps you go to another section and find something else.
You walk to the counter with your prize in hand; there is nothing like acquiring a book. New, used, falling apart, borrowed, the feeling is the same. It’s an anticipation of filling your head with something new.
The bag is crisp and you grab the handle, walking out of the bookstore with confidence that you’ve chosen correctly.
That night, you open the book. Its pages are full of words waiting to be read. It smells like paper – new, old, musty, crisp. However it smelled before, it now smells like book.
You read it and you love it. You read it again. And again. You decide that you don’t need a bookmark and start dog-earing the pages, or you turn the jacket flap in to mark your spot so many times that the edges become ragged. Something strikes your eye and you make a note with your pencil; it’s your book! You can do it! It’s so well read you know the story by heart, and still you read it often.
Soon it’s falling apart. Pages are accidentally ripped out from when you jumped off the bed when the cat shoved her claws in your thigh. Once while reading it at the table, you spilled hot chocolate on the pages. You’ve read it so many times, that there are dog-ears on every other page. You forgot it on the porch railing one evening and it rained that night, then the next day you left it in the sun to dry, and its pages got all crinkly.
But you can’t throw out a perfectly good book. It’s a travesty to throw out a book. It’s wasteful and shameful and honestly, abhorrent – you don’t throw out a friend. So instead, you place it on your bookshelf in a spot of honor. You know that it will be worth something to someone eventually. They will read your notes and become enlightened; they will see the coffee stains and realize this book was loved with a passion. But you don’t want it to die.
So you go to the bookstore again, and you walk carefully to the aisle you purchased your first copy in. you stare at the spine, knowing that you are replacing a friend. Maybe to help, you buy a paperback instead of a hardcover, a 10×7 instead of a 6×4. You grab the copy quickly to ease the pain and scurry out of the bookstore, hoping no one will see how anguished you are at buying a book.
Every time you read your new copy, you glance at the old one, resting, peacefully retired on the bookshelf. Its spine watches you softly as you start the process all over again.