Vision Quest

When I first started reading Vision Quest all I could think about was how different it was from the movie. I’d only seen the film about a week before and still had scenes playing back through my head. I know it’s a horrible thing to see the movie before you read the book in certain literary circles, but this time I don’t mind. Once I settled myself into the book, I discovered that what Terry Davis created in his words was a story that is touching and relevant and something a film can only dream of capturing.

            It’s not often that I pick up a book about a sport I haven’t played. High school wrestling is one of those niche markets that most authors don’t try and hit. But the book came highly recommended by my boyfriend, a former high school wrestler himself, and so I wanted to give it a go. I’m actually not that out of the loop when it comes to the high school wrestling scene. I had several friends in high school that wrestled and I sat through lunch with them, commiserating as I lost weight for pole vaulting and they for their respective weight class. They were good guys, most of them smart and funny and absolutely intent on being the best wrestlers in the state. The indoor track team of which I was a member also practiced in the gym at the same time as the wrestling team. I’ve witnessed practices like those Davis describes in the book and let me tell you, he isn’t making a single thing up. Wrestling is hard and sweaty work.

            Now to get back to the actual novel. Vision Quest is the story of senior wrestler Louden Swain. Louden has decided in his senior year to drop down to the 147 weight class instead of wrestling in his usual 154 place in order to wrestle against Gary Shute. The entirety of the story leads up to this match between the two, following Louden as he loses the weight and lives his life preparing for a moment that may define him for the rest of it. Between the opening lines and the handshake of the match against Shute, the reader discovers a boy who you can’t help but like.

The novel is character driven, concentrating more on the people within in the story instead of the story itself. The plot moves along, but falls in secondary to the exploration the author is making of teenagers on the brink of adulthood. Louden is at times the “muscle-bound, sex-crazed” jock that one might expect from this novel. He utterly kills himself for the sake of his sport, and spends an awful lot of time contemplating and having sex with his girlfriend Carla. Carla conveniently lives in the Swain house, a stray of sorts brought into the family through a bad car deal.  She and Louden make a cute couple. Carla is a free spirit, uninhibited and a little goofy. Actually Carla is a refreshing take on a teenage girl. She doesn’t seem concerned with fitting in and impressing people. She’s comfortable being herself, making up funny names for animals and following through on her generally crazy ideas. Louden is the same. He’s a kid who likes to think about things and the prose follows his mental wanderings as he connects his life now to moments in his past. It would be easy to become fed up with how Louden’s narration jumps from thought to thought and seems to follow a winding trail to no particular point, but he draws you in. He’s a nice person who appreciates his life and the chance he’s been given and all he wants is to understand the world he’s living in. He’s dedicated and funny and sweet, the kind of kid every high school teacher loves.

Louden is a rare literary treat in a sea of coming of age novels where the protagonist is angst ridden or arrogant or down right unlikable. John Irving has been quoted saying Vision Quest is “the truest novel about growing up since The Catcher in the Rye,” and I am willing to go out on a limb and say this surpasses Catcher by a mile. Louden realizes what he feels as he prepares for the Shute match is a sense of growing up. His self-awareness is remarkable and I fear to write more about him because I’ll simply ramble on about what a lovely protagonist he makes. However, I do want to address the sports genre as a whole and how Vision Quest magically avoids the pitfalls that usually come along with it.

We’ve all gone to see a sports movie or read a sports book and right from the get go we know that the end will result in one of two things. Either the protagonist will win and everything will work out in the end or they will lose but still triumph in having tried their best. Remember the Titans: They win the state championship and rise above racial segregation. Yay. Cool Runnings: They lose but gain the respect of the world. With each of these endings the audience is left just slightly unsatisfied. If they win then we all scoff and say “well of course, the entire movie was about them,” but if they lose then we are sad because who wants to watch a movie that ends on a downer? Vision Quest deftly handles this question. No I’m not telling you the ending. I’m telling you that you might be surprised.

So what do we have? We have a likeable character living out a slightly impossible dream. We have a sports novel that’s more about growing up and figuring out who you are than the final score of every match. We have a book that is worth the read, despite your age and interest in high school wrestling. I’m giving total credit to my boyfriend for encouraging me to read this one and am now telling you to do the same. Enjoy!

Greetings from afar.

Hello folks. I've been remiss about posting lately. It's certainly not that I haven't been reading. In fact it could have been a case of reading too much and not being able to stop myself from jumping into the next book I had waiting on my shelf.
Anyways, here are several snippet reviews. Have fun!

Anna Karenina
I've been meaning to read this book forever. It's been placed on a pedestal in the cannon of literature, and I would have felt awfully guilty if I went to see the movie this Christmas and hadn't read the source material for it. To be honest, I should have saved myself the trouble.
Tolstoy's crowning achievement is a sweeping family epic to be sure, following the lives of multiple families whose lives all seem to intertwine. For the first two hundred pages I was swept up in a world of unhappy marriages, illicit affairs, romance and scandal all glossed with the faint chill of Russian Aristocratic society. I would have been happy had the book ended there, with the title character in the throes of her affair and the rest of the characters generally wallowing in misery. Alas, it does not end there.
The novel continues. It goes on and on, bogging down in the middle as Tolstoy explains the plight of the Russian peasant and the varying views on agriculture held in the day. His characters become internal, each locked inside their own heads, barely acknowledging the feelings of others because they are too busy analyzing every moment of their own lives. I fault Tolstoy for creating people that must feel everything in such a catastrophic and melodramatic way. The slightest glance askew from a lady at the table sends a man into an existential crisis, or a fit of melancholy. There is no reality in this attempt to create just that. I will say that Tolstoy gets Anna's characterization spot on. She is unhappy in her marriage, finds a new man who thrills and loves her, but soon finds that even the man of her dreams cannot make her happy. Anna has a quick wit and a confidence about her that I enjoyed, in the beginning. Sadly by the end I'd grown tired of her whining about how she was unhappy despite not making any effort to change her circumstances.
Please don't get me wrong. I respect Tolstoy and the great achievement that this novel is. Anyone who can even vaguely carry on a story for at least seven hundred pages deserves some sort of credit. In this case however, there are too many words and I was lost in them as they washed over me. By the end of the novel I didn't even care that a character had thrown themselves under a train. It was one sentence among thousands, and the singular mention of that particular characters fate.
I would be willing to delve deeper into Russian Literature and find out why this characterization of intrinsic thinking seems to be such a theme among authors of that time and place. I like the pursuit of academia. For the lay reader though, I will give you this advice. See the movie. It's most likely combined all the parts of the novel that are exciting into one coherent story and left the Russian peasants for high school history lessons.

Protector of the Small Quartet
Now here are novels that I can get behind. This is another series by my favorite young adult author Tamora Pierce. The four books follow the story of Keladry of Mindelan, the first girl to openly try for her knighthood. The story is set in the familiar medieval and magical world of Tortall and is full of characters who have already had Pierce quartets of their own.
Kel is headstrong and has no magical ability. She succeeds based on her sheer strength of will, which while coming off a bit outrageous when she's eleven, forms a character that women can both relate to and respect as Kel comes of age. Her group of friends are funny, smart and loyal and the novels move along at a good clip, never spending too much time stressing any one particular idea.
I love Tamora Pierce because she writes characters that I would want to be friends with, and Kel is no exception. I'm loathe to go on about this series too much more, because it will only be me fan-girling my way through the entire plot. I'll leave it at this. If you want action, romance, friendship and one bad ass woman making her way in the world, then this is the series for you.  I can whip through each of the books in a few hours so it's perfect when you want a quick escape into a world of fantasy where you don't need to think an awful lot to be swept up in the story.

Well if you've stayed with me this far then you are definitely the ones I want reading this last bit. I need you folks to spread the word about me and my blog. I've graduated from college, I"m working on my master's in the summer but right now I'm trying to find a job. Substitute teaching (where I am at this very moment in time) is a rewarding gig right now, but I want to write and share books with people like you. If you know of people looking for writers/editors/someone to read manuscripts and decide what should get published, leave me a message here and tell me about it. I will even reward you with a review of your choice. Or a short story. Or brownies. Take your pick.

One last side note! I know, I can just see you rolling your eyes and closing the page right now, but wait. I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month and am about half way through right now. If anyone else is doing this, let's be writing buddies. You can find me under "thinking of the sea"

Cheers!

So Many New Books!

Hi everyone. The New York Times book section just published this article about all the fantastic books coming out this fall. I'm definitely getting my hands on some of them, most exciting being McEwan and Rowling's new works!

Yay New Books

In the meantime, more quick reviews coming as well as a longer one once I finish the novel I'm reading now. Cheers!

Reviews in Brief

I've been on a bit of a reading spree and find myself unable to finish up a proper length review before I dive into the next book, so I thought I'd give you some quick snippets instead. All three of these novels are (unexpected) quality and deserve a mention.

Cox
This was my other pick at the Heathrow airport. I'm a rower and there is never any sort of fiction about the sport, so when my eye caught the title of this book I was thrilled. I was even more thrilled when I looked at the cover more closely and discovered that someone had managed to take all of the sexual innuendo that rowing generates and turn it into a romance novel. Cox does manage to escape most romance novel pitfalls (no bodice ripping or heath wandering here) but in the end it is a story that I loved because it was set in Oxford and about rowers. I doubt many other people would share my utter glee, but it's worth a peek at least. There are some yummy Olympic hopefuls, and enough reality to keep things grounded and moving along.

Falling in Love with English Boys
This novel takes the form of a blog written by a sixteen year old spending the summer in England. She's been dragged there by her mother and does not expect to enjoy herself much. However she manages to find her very own Prince William and the story takes the typical course of young adult romance. However, the saving grace lies in the narrator Cat's interest in things other than boys and lip gloss. Her story is paired with a diary of a young girl from the 19th century that Cat is supposedly reading. The two plots intertwine nicely and the inclusion of historical elements that show up in both stories is refreshing. Cat also finds herself spending time with a truly amazing group of friends, who are glamorous and intelligent, and best of all, willing to take Cat under their wings and be a good friend to her. I found myself wishing I could hang out with this group of girls too. There is a universal appeal to this novel that lends itself to recommendation, particularly to those who enjoy a good snarky young adult protagonist without actually reading a young adult novel.

Water for Elephants
I committed the cardinal sin of book lovers when it came to this novel, and saw the movie first. However, the book is amazing and much better than the film, although I will say the film does it justice. The author has taken the time to understand old time circuses and the detail of both sides of that world is gripping and powerful. I never wanted to put this book down, the characters are that well done and the story that compelling. Having the narrator switch back and forth from being an old man trapped in a nursing home to being his spry twenty three year old self works well, and my compassion for him builds as the novels goes on, so that by the end of the story you are gunning for him to make it, no matter his age. There is romance, intrigue and action, all gritty and intense and a must read for anyone who loves books.

Right, so there you go. Hope you find something excellent to read. Perhaps in exchange tell some people about this blog and start following it yourself!
Cheers.

The Stranger's Child

Picking up a book at Heathrow airport is a special process. You are choosing what form of entertainment will singularly be available to you for the next seven or so hours. It’s a rather daunting choice when you look at it closely, and lets face it, airports aren’t exactly known for their stellar selection of novels. Imagine my surprise when I stepped into the bookshop at Heathrow on my way back from Oxford and found Alan Hollinghurst’s latest novel, The Stranger’s Child, staring me down from an upper shelf. The store was offering a buy 1, get 1 deal, and since I already had one book in my hand, I found myself grabbing this one with the vague remembrance of reading another Hollinghurst novel earlier in the year. For those of you who are already familiar with Hollinghurst and his general subject matter, you will appreciate the wonderful irony of the other book I was holding being titled Cox. For those of you unfamiliar with this author, his agenda must be put rather bluntly. Hollinghurst is a gay author writing about gay characters; with the goal of breaking the established divide between a love story and a gay love story.

            In this particular novel, the reader is treated to not just one gay character, but many, spanning the decades of the sweeping family drama. Hollinghurst introduces his readers to Cecil Valance, a charming young Cambridge poet, who is visiting his friend (and lover) George’s house for the weekend. With his brash wit and unmatchable belief is his own desirability, Cecil leaves the household in a whirlwind of varying feelings and memories, that are followed throughout the subsequent sections of the story, long after Cecil himself has faded into the background. Particularly embroiled in this ongoing story is George’s younger sister Daphne, whose presence throughout the rest of the novel serves as the continuous thread for the story, even as sections deviate away from her personal thoughts and into those of outsiders trying to understand the part she played in the famous poet’s life.

            This segmented structure of the novel seems to be an attempt to keep things fresh and the reader interested over the course of five hundred plus pages. Hollinghurst only lets the reader begin to understand where the narrator is coming from and what they aim to do before rapidly shifting, often moving ahead in time at least a decade or two. We meet George, Daphne, a confident schoolmaster called Peter, and Paul, a nervous biographer, and finally a bookseller called Rob. The novel loses steam in the sections that are told from Peter and Paul’s point of view, partially because they occur within a similar time frame and introduce many of the same figures we’ve already seen. Paul is also simply an unlikable man, too nervous about his sexuality to ever be happy and too overconfident in his ability to write Cecil’s biography to ever have much success. The last section of course calls this initial assessment into question, but then again, that seems to be the last sections purpose anyways. Towards the end of the novel, the question of which narrator can the reader trust comes up, as earlier points of view are discredited in their old age and newer ones are revealed to have been keeping vast secrets. In the end it seems Hollinghurst aims to leave the reader guessing, and perhaps even a bit unsatisfied with the knowledge that we may never truly know what happened in a particular instance, even if we were there. No amount of later research, or discovery of lost books will help us to piece together the mystery. It is simply lost to the blowing smoke of time.

            The one true fault I find in this novel, besides its pacing issues in the middle, is Hollinghurst’s obsession with not writing about sex. He swiftly draws his characters into erotic situations, hinting like mad at all the dirty thoughts going through the men’s minds, and yet when the moment comes, he immediately cuts away to a different scene. The reader is left with barely a coherent suggestion of what happened. While this works in the context of the novel, and does go against the increase of sex for sex’s sake in many recent novels, there were moments when all I wanted was to have some details instead of heavily veiled hints! In this day and age no one is truly shocked by two men having sex, and there are certainly ways to write erotically without descending into pornography and sacrificing the literary art the author strives for. The Stranger’s Child as been touted by other reviewers as “one of the best novels published this year” and “a remarkable, unmissable achievement.” While I’m not ready to throw my hat in with those calling it the best novel of the year, I will say that for it’s broad scope and slippery subject matter, Alan Hollinghurst has written a novel of substance and charm that is worth putting one’s energies into.

His Dark Materials Series

I never read the His Dark Materials series (The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife & The Amber Spyglass) when I was a child. I remember hearing about them, and the buzz they created, and I even managed to finish the first book, The Golden Compass, but somewhere along the way I was distracted. I’m here to tell you that that distraction was perhaps the best thing that happened to me in my literary journey, since I have now finally finished the series, while living in Oxford and as an adult that understands the profound beauty and power of Philip Pullman’s sweeping epic.

I found myself initially intrigued by the main character, a supposedly orphan girl named Lyra who runs wild over Oxford, while being brought up by the many scholars at Jordan College. Lyra is headstrong and lacks manners and polish. I found myself oscillating between liking her and finding her difficult to take seriously. She is at one moment a child, willful and selfish, and at the next moment wise beyond her years. Pullman has captured that strange stage of growing up, where on the brink of adolescence we are all caught between the adult and childhood world. While navigating growing up in circumstances far from normal, Lyra introduces us to a world that is similar to ours but with just enough unusual quirks to keep us guessing. The most obvious quirk of course is that each human being has a daemon, an animal projection of their soul that can shift shape during childhood and then settles on a fixed form when the person reaches adult hood. These are not pets but an extension of that person’s being, and Pullman is brilliant for having come up with such a concrete concept for the human soul.

Lyra’s companion through the series is a serious boy called Will, who is about Lyra’s age but has none of her childish frivolity. He is determined to find his father, cares for his mother deeply, and finds himself caught up on an adventure that changes his destiny. Will is my favorite character by far, perhaps because I forget he is only about thirteen. He sees the world as it is and is quite capable in all of the unlikely and fantastic situations he finds himself in. His devotion to his mother is heartbreaking and his ability to carry the heavy burden placed upon him towards the middle of the series with grace and humility makes him the ideal hero. Reading Will again made me forget that these are books aimed at children, for I could see the man he would grow to become and admired him immensely.

We of course met other memorable characters over the course of the three novels, including Serafina Pekkala, a witch of great age and beauty; Lee Scroesby, an aeronaut from Texas; Iorek Byrnison, an armored bear; Lord Asriel, a man hell-bent on destroying God and Mrs. Coulter, a woman whose beauty and charm hides a dark and complex inner-self. This cast is strong, vitally described and haunting and funny in their turn, pushing Lyra and Will along their prophesized journey.

I feel it would be foolish to even attempt a summary of the plot of His Dark Materials, for Pullman has achieved a story that is on par with the breadth and depth of Tolkien and Lewis. There are worlds upon worlds to be discovered, people of all kinds, magic and theology melting together into a swirl of fantasy that takes up the reader and only sets them down after they’ve experience grief, elation, uncertainty and triumph. The language never condescends, and in fact I often found myself wondering how on earth these were children’s books at all? There is so much in them that made me, an adult, pause and think and therein lies the delight. A child may read them for the adventure, an adult for the theological questions and genuine exploration of emotion and destiny. Just as Lyra and Will don’t understand much of what they’ve done until the very end, the reader may experience the series on multiple levels. It’s ok not to get everything, and even better, it’s better not to be conscious of not knowing. Just as Lyra and Will are unaware of their destinies, the reader goes in without knowing what impact the novels will have on them upon completion. I personally had the tears on standby as I read the last section of The Amber Spyglass, and even during parts of The Subtle Knife. Pullman made me care about every character, never letting someone be purely good or evil, and thus when each character met their particular fate, I felt connected to that result.

His Dark Materials stands out in my mind as a series that must be read, by everyone at some point in their lives. The grace and genius that went into creating this compelling story is something to be astounded by, and I salute Philip Pullman.

A Midsummer Tights Dream

Two reviews in two days? She must be crazy, you say. She must have loads of time on her hands, despite working on a degree. Or, someone might whisper, she might have found a book easy enough to whip through with funny loveable characters that keep you reading until the last page without putting down the book once. Ding ding ding, we have a winner with contestant number three!

            Apparently having read two Louise Rennison books in two days has made me start to write like one of her characters as well, which is quite fun although occasionally exhausting. I’m not sure how our dear Tallulah Casey does it, keeping the flow of fresh and ridiculous epithets and observations coming in such force. A Midsummer Tights Dream is chock full of Tallulah’s original perspectives on life at Dother Hall, and made me laugh even more than the first book in the series. Remember how I said I had been left with plot points hanging everywhere last time? Well now I am left with new plot points hanging in different ways, but with some of the old ones wrapped up neatly. Rennison has done an excellent job in keeping the reader interested in this fast paced world that seems to revolve around understanding teenage boys while also making crazy “art.”

            We meet up with Tallulah beginning her second term at Dother Hall, back in the cozy arms of her quirky group of friends. Tallulah seems to be falling into the whirlwind of teenage romance, as she sorts through her feelings towards Charlie, the boy who kissed her but has a girlfriend, Alex, the dreamy (and unavailable) older brother of Ruby, and Cain, resident misunderstood bad boy who seems to be toying with Tallulah for his own amusement. I hate to say that Rennison is falling into a tried and true path, but this is much the same formula that works in the Georgia Nicolson series. One girl, many boys, however will she choose? In fact, much of this second novel began to remind me of Rennison’s other series, with some of the characters beginning to form personalities not all that different from Georgia’s Ace Gang. The fact that Tallulah’s friends are called the Tree Sisters doesn’t quite add that definitive stamp of originality quite yet. However, I read the first series because I found them funny and I’m willing to read this series because they are shaping up to be just as, if not more funny.

            I enjoy Tallulah’s take on the boys in her life, but also appreciate that she doesn’t let her entire story become about them. She still goes and visits the owlets with Ruby and is involved with her life at Dother Hall. In A Midsummer Tights Dream the reader is starting to get an idea that Tallulah does actually want to be a star and find some sort of talent within herself. We are realizing that she is a born comedian, and slowly with the help of a few kind teachers, Tallulah is seeing that spark as well. She is cast as Bottom by the evil Dr. Lightowler in the school’s production of A Midsummer Nights Dream by Shakespeare, and manages to steal the show with her silly Irish dancing and general out of control legs. We see another side of Tallulah as she often writes down various thoughts in her performance notebook, all of which are hilarious but also hold the small ingot of real imagination, or at least creative vision.

            Again, the only real fault that I will find in the novel is the hasty wrap up at the end. We’ve been told Dother Hall has fallen into financial ruin and the play is supposed to raise money to help keep it open, however this is resolved within a paragraph by nearly magical means. Tallulah becomes involved with Cain only for us to have that cut short as well. I’m not sure if Rennison is realizing that her book is running on a bit and decides to just leave off, or if she is intentionally trying to build suspense for the next installment in the series. The later certainly works on me, since I am now going to wait impatiently until February 2013 to find out what Tallulah will get up to next. So again, definitely read this book, indulge in a quick read that will have you at least grinning if not chuckling and let yourself be a teenager again. An English teenager stuck in a Northern world surrounded by crazy pseudo artists, but a teenager nonetheless.

Withering Tights

I remember back when I was a teenager reading The Confessions of Georgia Nicholson series and literally laughing out loud in the middle of a crowded freshman study hall at the crazy British antics of Louise Rennison’s memorable heroine. In her new series, Rennison has introduced us to a new leading lady, Tallulah Casey, fourteen and a half, fresh off to performing arts college and a sweeter counterpart to her older cousin Georgia. The first book of this new series, Withering Tights, lands London dwelling Tallulah in the middle of Yorkshire at Dother Hall, a performing arts college that is running a summer program for aspiring artists. Tallulah is an immediately likable protagonist, for despite being fourteen and typically worried about lipstick and when she will ever be able to wear a bra, she is quirky and awkward, a bundle of long legs and a big heart that lacks the meanness of a typical teenage girl. In fact, Rennison has created an entire group of young girls who don’t feel the need to hide who they are (except around boys) and are not the vindictive mean girls America is so used to. Tallulah’s friends Jo, Vaisey, Flossie and Honey are each adorable portraits of girls trying to find themselves while hitting some speed bumps along the way.

            Tallulah lives in the village with a host family, since her parents signed her up late for the program and there wasn’t space in the dormitory for her. We get veiled hints that Tallulah’s parents are separated and incredibly distant, not so much parents but wild souls that happened to have a child. Rennison has chosen not to go into this particular plot point just yet, although I have a feeling it will come out more as the series continues. Instead, we get Tallulah’s host family, an incredibly happy couple with twin boys who are incapable of saying anything but “bogie.” Tallulah is charmed by this little family who find genuine pleasure in going outside to look at clouds or participating in the village wide skipping rope weaving project. While she sometimes longs for the bustle of the city, Tallulah takes her location in stride, something I appreciated. She becomes friends with the local pub owners daughter, Ruby, who is the most precocious ten year old I’ve found in literature thus far. The two form a wonderful friendship based on Ruby’s boy advice and the hatching of baby owls that they name after themselves. Tallulah is also half in love with Ruby’s older brother Alex, which finally begins to thicken the plot of this breezy novel.

            This is of course a young adult story, and thus boys make up much of the plot. The Dother Hall girls meet several boys their age who attend the nearby Woolfe Academy, and the entire lot becomes fast friends, pairing off into couples with astonishing speed. Tallulah finds herself on her first date and having her first kiss with someone quite unexpected, and the description of that kiss is absolutely hilarious. I won’t ruin it, but think awkward like you wouldn’t believe. Of course, there is Alex and another friend called Charlie who Tallulah finds herself drawn to as well. And then lurking in the shadows is the local bad boy, Cain. It’s unclear what his ultimate role with Tallulah will be, but he serves as a decent villain, or as much of a villain as this story is likely to have. The boys are relatively one dimensional, but I feel in time we’ll begin to find out more of their personalities, just as the girls characters will be expanded in the coming books.

            Besides boys, Tallulah’s main concern is finding her place at Dother Hall and being accepted back as a full time student for the coming fall term. She can’t sing, she can’t dance (except for some crazy Irish jigs) and overall she is the quirky tall girl self conscious about her knees who doesn’t quite fit in. We have several wonderful encounters with her various teachers; all who profess to understand the arts and how to be an artist but never seem to back that up with performance proof. Watching Tallulah find her place among these crazy people creates an endearing story, one that most readers will relate to, of trying to find where you fit in the world and hoping that your dreams are good enough to make it happen.

            The only fault I found in Withering Tights was the rather abrupt ending. I know the series is going to continue but things seemed to wrap up at an incredibly high speed and even then I was left with a lot of plot threads hanging about. I’m wiling to overlook this and praise the book overall, since I have the next one sitting on my bedside table and can start it as soon as I finish this review. Withering Tights is a ridiculously fast read, I managed it in one day of reading for a few hours here and there, and rightly so, as you are pulled in by Tallulah and her endearing journey to find herself, and some excellent friends along the way. Check it out if you are up for British humor and sensibilities and a quick, uncomplicated read for the beach or a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Becoming a New Inkling!

Hello all! I hope you don't think I've completely forgotten about this blog. I am indeed still having musings about books, however my hypothetical leather chair has moved over to Oxford England for the summer! I'm in the city that gave birth to The Lord of the Rings, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, His Dark Materials and even scenes from Harry Potter. Couldn't be better, right? I'm working on the first summer of my master's degree in English, studying Shakespeare until I feel like I"m having a rather intimate affair with the ol' bard.
Have no fear though, I managed to pick up some new young adult fiction by one of my favorite British authors today, so you will have reviews to look forward to very soon. As a slight side note, there will be a small increase in the amount of YA novels that I start to review. I'm beginning to realize that looking at them from an academic point of view, as I did with my undergrad senior thesis, is actually quite awesome and something I might take further. In the meantime,  thank you for waiting patiently and you will be rewarded soon, I promise!
Cheers from Lincoln College, Oxford University,
Hallie

The Dispossessed

 I’m normally not a sci-fi kind of girl, having read enough of it to know that I prefer jousting and dragons to warp speed and aliens. I also had had no experience with Ursula K. LeGuin up until this point besides slogging through Earthsea in 5^th grade. Needless to say, I didn’t approach this particular novel about an alien physicist revolutionary with much gusto. However, my boyfriend told me I should read it, and I knew I’d get through it if only as a favor to him. Imagine my surprise when instead of forcing my way through the book I found I was actually enjoying it and looking forward to when I could take a break from finals and sit down to read.

The Dispossessed is the story of Shevek, a physicist living on the planet Anarres. He is a descendent of revolutionary settlers, who fed up with life on the home planet of Urras, traveled to one of it’s moons to set up a social community that lived without the propertied constraints of their previous home. Shevek’s story picks up nearly two hundred years later. Anarres has succeeded in existing without a central government, keeping the idealistic foundations the society was built upon alive. Shevek, while believing in this system, has begun to see its flaws, the ways in which power will always corrupt man, despite their best intentions and denial that there is any hierarchy or power to be corrupted by. He travels to Urras with the intention of learning all he can about the home planet, while also inciting a revolutionary mindset in both those he leaves behind and those he goes to. He sees the need for change, for connection between the two worlds, and yet he is a man apart, never quite fitting in on either Urras of Anarres.

The novel follows two linear timelines, one of Shevek’s childhood and the events leading up to his departure from Anarres, and the other following from his landing on Urras. At first, this later plot line is the more interesting of the two. He encounters a world unlike his own, but not so different from ours today, and his blunt observations provide both humor and a deep insight into how anyone sees a culture that differs from their own. This plot falls into a swirl of political intrigue and as a reader I found myself becoming more engaged with the other plot, the story of Shevek’s life and development of his mind to the revolutionary threshold he’s come to occupy. I do not fault the novel for my switch of interests; in fact I must compliment LeGuin for the creation of both a history and an adventure story so easily intertwined. She has written characters that are compelling, not so alien as to be off putting to the reader, and yet of a different sort of race, one that asks the big hard questions daily and actively seeks the answers.

There is a lot of thinking that happens in this novel, both on the part of the reader and by the characters themselves. Shevek, being a physicist, often embarks on long and complicated voyages of thought, and occasionally will arrive at an answer that can be understood by the layman. LeGuin worked hard to keep the novel from appealing only to those who understand the intricacies of science, and as an English major, I greatly appreciated that. It was instead the beautiful command of language that drew my greatest attention and now my greatest praise. LeGuin is an artist, writing settings so breathtakingly beautiful that they must be real. Her characters are witty or thought provoking or simply determined, and they are fallible, dynamically working throughout the plot to support a story asking questions bigger than it.

It’s funny, I sit here praising the language and yet I find it hard to pin point what else about this novel really struck me. Yes, the plot was interesting, the characters believable, the writing sound, and everything came together smoothly. I suppose that I must say I appreciate and liked the book as a whole, but nothing stuck out, for good or bad. The Dispossessed is certainly worth the read, and perhaps then you too will join me in this strange post-reading place, knowing that I’ve experienced something important but not quite putting my finger on what it was.

Shameless Self Promotion

Hi everyone! I know you are desperately looking for a book review, and I promise, I will put one up by the end of April. I am reading books, most of them just happen to be for my thesis and I have a feeling you lot can only stomach so much George R.R. Martin and Tamora Pierce before you fly off the handle and demand something besides fantasy. But rest assured, the next post will be the complete opposite. Makes you curious, doesn't it?
Well in the meantime, to tide you over, I thought I would selfishly induldge in a bit of shameless self promotion. You may or may not know that I am not only getting my BA in English, but also in Theatre, and as my senior work I starred in (and produced) the show Stop Kiss by Diana Son. It was an incredible process, with the show going up over Easter weekend. This is the link to the review in our campus newspaper about it, so that everyone can get a glimpse of what I devoted my spring semester to. I will admit, the review is a bit shallow but I won't even get into how meta it would be if I reviewed a review about myself, so just read it and enjoy.

Stop Kiss Review!

Crooked Little Vein

Hello everyone! I apologize for the lack of posts lately. Somehow that whole being a college senior and looking for a job while working on two theses caught up with me. However, I've managed to actually get some reading in, and thus can finally provide you with some new book suggestions!

I was told to read and review this book by two of my friends. Them being who they are, I began reading with a touch of trepidation. After all, when the back cover boasts a quote from Joss Whedon (if you don’t know who that is, you should) saying, “I think this book ate my soul,” one wonders what they’ve gotten themselves into. I found myself instantly submerged into a gritty, disgusting world where the good guys were relatively repulsive people and the bad guys were simply unspeakable. And that was only in the first chapter!

            Author Warren Ellis’ novel looks like an easy read at first glance, and I will admit, the chapters are easily whipped through, with a large amount of white space on the page and a distinct lack of elevated language or style. However, I still found myself slowing down to process the set of horrid images being laid out before me. The book is at its heart a detective novel, and yet it deals in a world so dark and sexually perverse that it is unlike anything I’ve ever read before. Half of the things the protagonist, Mike McGill, encounters during his search for the secret alternative Constitution of the United States (yup, I did just say that) I hadn’t even heard of before, nor do I really ever want to hear about again. This is not a novel for the easily offended, or the frail constitution. And yet somehow, despite these scenes I’ve alluded to that were so mind numbingly sick, I found myself thoroughly enjoying this book. There is something about McGill’s cynical look on life and darkly humorous take on the way his hunt plays out that is endearing, and downright compelling. As much as I didn’t want to go deeper into the underbelly of American culture, I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Once you read the novel you will understand the great irony of that last statement

            Of course, like any great novel there must be a romance, and it is here that Ellis begins to lose steam. McGill tries desperately not to fall for his young assistant Trix, a deviant student writing her thesis on extremes of self-inflicted human experience. The two team up against McGill’s better judgment and soon begin their completely unbelievable affair. There is some build up to the sexual tension between the two characters, which could hardly have been avoided given Trix’s blatant sexuality and disregard for social norms, but the emotional strength between them seems to come out of nowhere. It is an idealized relationship, created to perhaps juxtapose the world of lies, mistrust and corruption that the two find themselves thrown into, but never the less, one that will cause readers like myself to groan a bit and then push onward into the novel, choosing to ignore poor romantic plotting in favor for the vivid character descriptions that are Ellis’s forte.

            I don’t think I’ve come across a novel where the characters were described in such unconventional detail. Ellis has created people who we never encounter in real life, but somehow believe in while reading because they are detailed in such a truthful manner. He is not simply saying the man had blue eyes and blonde hair, but instead concentrates on the eccentricities and subconscious patterns that only a detective would truly pick up on. When the Chief of Staff of the United States describes himself as  having opium lesions on his brain and the closest thing to God that this country will ever see, you know you’re in for an interesting read.

            So I suppose what I’m telling you all is that if you can get over the more unbelievable aspects of the story, and then wade through the veritable pool of filth and vulgarity, you will find yourself compelled to keep reading this novel and fully taken along for the ride.

and now for a bit of a change...

Hey all! I know I've been rather remiss about posting reviews as of late. I'm currently reading every single sonnet Shakespeare ever wrote (154) and I know that no one actually wants to read a review of each one. So until I comment on that as a whole, and also read some new books, I thought I would entertain you lot with this review that I wrote for The Hunt.
The Hunt is a massive scavenger hunt that happens every January at my college, and as seniors, my friends and I decided to really go out with a bang and do the whole thing with great gusto and skill. Our team, No More Unicorns is awesome. Just sayin'. (Also follow us on Twitter if you have an account, @nomoreunicorns) One of the challenges was to write a scathing book review of The Scarlet Letter. So here it is, and just remember, it's a joke! (Well, sort of).

The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne is an author who can be commended for many things. Not many people can boast of living in a house with not six but seven gables, and being bros with Herman Melville. What he cannot be commended for is the writing of The Scarlet Letter. A novel forced upon high school students practically since it’s inception, Hawthorne subsequently subjects readers to a brutal bashing of symbolism (RED IS BAD) and intolerance set against that all so intriguing backdrop of early Puritan New England.

            Our heroine, Hester Prynne, is supposed to be the ultimate badass. Not only does she have hot sex with the minister and then keep the resulting kid, she proudly wears a red letter “A” on her chest, marking her out as an adulteress. But no, we aren’t allowed to recognize just how cool and strong and independent Hester is being. Feminism is reigned in tightly, in favor of an overbearing Puritanical style that begs the reader to see the main character as pathetic, relatively evil and in the wrong. Like we’re supposed to enjoy reading about someone who sucks? Then of course there is Pearl, Hester’s daughter from her naughty night with Dimmesdale (who I will thoroughly scourge later). Pearl is the essence of a demon child, and yet we’re again supposed to have opposite feelings and take pity on her, love her even. Oh, and lest I forget, we must recognize that SHE IS A SYMBOL!

            Pearl of course is nothing compared to her father, the town minister Dimmesdale. A man who preachers all the usual Christian whatnot and then goes out and does the sexy widow late one night in the forest. A character one might actually be able to sink their teeth into. Except for Hawthorne’s inability to let the reader do so. Instead we are handed everything character trait wrapped firmly in it’s one and only meaning and told to apply that to the scene at hand. The man’s name is Dimmesdale for crying out loud. I would have gotten that he’s depressed and morally conflicted if his name had been Johnson too, thanks very much.

Even scenes when Dimmesdale is whipping himself, struggling with his desire for Hester and his love of God aren’t interesting because the reader has already come to expect how things will play out. They won’t get together, there will be sillier blathering about morality and rose bushes and prison doors and then the book will end. There is nothing to the plot that lends any sort of credibility. In fact, I get the sense that were I to rip out all the pages of the book, spread them on the ground in front of me, trample on them for good measure and then put them back together in a random order, I would still get the same story.

In fact, the only good thing about The Scarlet Letter is the ending. Not the ending, but the fact that the book itself ends and thank God for that. As I was reading I found myself thinking I would rather get a paper cut every time I turned the page than actually finish reading the book, and my edition was at least 200 pages long. So don’t go read the Scarlet Letter. In fact, don’t get anywhere near it, unless it is to casually toss is into an open flame as you pass by on your way to bro out with more quality works like The Counting House and Moby Dick.

Looking for Alaska

My first exposure to John Green’s Looking for Alaska was in my often talked about children’s lit course this past semester. We’d been discussing censorship and the challenging of various books, and my professor brought up a video that John Green had made in which he addressed his views on the banning of his own book. For some context on this video, John and his brother stopped speaking for a year except by video, which they posted on YouTube to each other every day. I was immediately struck by the intelligence, and quick wit of this author, who clearly believed in what he had written, and didn’t feel the need to censor anything in his novel, because those elements were helping him get to the greater truth. To paraphrase John Green paraphrasing William Faulkner, “I am not interested in the facts, only the truth.” That is exactly what Looking for Alaska does. It finds the truth despite the facts, and speaks with the voice of an adolescent splendidly.

            The novel of course is split into two parts, before and after, which makes writing any sort of review for it rather difficult, since I can’t talk at all about the after, or why there even is an after to talk about. Alas, I’ll just have to leave that in as a hook to you, future reader, and assure you that this is a first class novel worthy of your time. Yes, it was written for high schoolers. But honestly, at this point, who cares? I’m just as interested in reading about awkward first sexual encounters and the idiosyncrasies of teachers now as when I was sixteen. John Green has mastered the high school voice, such that I immediately loved the main character Miles “Pudge” Halter and would have probably been his friend. In fact as I was reading I really wished that I were in with the group that Pudge was, best friends with the Colonel and desperately in love with Alaska Young, your typical enigmatic troubled teen girl who is heartbreakingly beautiful and never going to be with you. It is this talent of Green’s to write voice so well that each character is distinct, but believable, that makes the novel successful.

            Of course I’m a sucker for language in general, and when not working in his characters voice, Green displays his skill of creating a scene, a feeling, what have you, that is beautiful without showing off. This is not the prose of James Joyce, and yet there is a beauty in simplicity, in explaining the details of a mundane dorm room or particularly dull professor that still turns into polished and wonderfully readable writing. For me it also helped that the Alabama boarding school where the novel is set is based quite heavily upon the boarding school one of my best friends attended, and being able to link her stories into the background knowledge that Green works off of was a fun personal endeavor for me.

            So I’ve babbled for a while, haven’t I? You are sitting there still wondering why on earth you should read this book. It is not enough that I tell you too? No, in all seriousness, this is a novel that covers the full scope of human emotion. I laughed out loud (yup, I LOLed), I cried, I felt awkward for some characters and thrilled for others. There is everything on these pages, and Green has given the story to his reader in a way that is easy without being patronizing. He wants the reader to understand grief and love and humor and all that is essentially high school, while also still acknowledging that a sixteen year old can have elevated thoughts, even existential questions about life. It is a successful novel that is most certainly on my re-reading list, and a novel I feel may just be worthy of the title “The Catcher in the Rye for this generation.” There now, you have to read it, just to see if I’m right. Don’t you love the pull of a grandiose statement?