All posts tagged survival

The Culling: A Supercharged, Action-Packed Adventure

A Review of The Culling (The Torch Keeper #1) by Steven dos Santos

Flux, 2013

The Culling Torch Keeper #1 Steven dos Santos

by REBECCA, April 10, 2013

characters

Lucian “Lucky” Spark: smart and forced to grow up too soon after losing his parents, he will do whatever it takes to protect his little brother, Cole

Digory Tycho: strong and dependable, he is working with the resistance against the bloodthirsty government that controls things

hook

Every year, The Establishment recruits five citizens to face The Trials, with their loved ones as the Incentives for their success. When Lucian tries to take things into his own hands to protect his brother, he finds himself a Recruit, fighting for his brother’s life, and Digory, who seems desperate to protect him, is a Recruit right along with him. What mysteries is The Establishment hiding, and how can Lucian and Digory have any hope of being together when they may have to kill each other to save their Incentives?

worldview

Ok, so I’ve read reviews that call books or movies “supercharged” and always thought it was a really stupid word . . . until I read The Culling. There is just something about it that seemed amped-up, dynamic . . . well, supercharged.

The world of The Culling is a grim one. The Establishment controls every element of the lives of those living in the city through military presence, information-repression, disease, and poverty. Then there are The Trials: if you win, you have the chance to be an officer of The Establishment; if you lose, the people you love the most will die. When The Culling begins, Lucian is attempting to gain an audience with the prefect of the city, who came from his neighborhood, to try and protect his little brother, Cole, when he finds himself thrown headfirst into The Trials alongside the very person he’s attracted to: Digory Tycho, a highly capable member of the resistance with a heart of gold, at least where Lucian is concerned.

The Trials are sick, dude! I mean, like, messed-up in an awesome, eerie, Steven-dos-Santos-please-be-my-creepy-friend kind of way. The worldview of The Culling in general is one in which you cannot trust anyone, everyone will betray you, and people have been forced to do things for survival that leave psychological scars as well as physical ones. I admired dos Santos’ ability to present the truly harrowing consequences of The Trials, in which the Recruit who comes in last in each round must choose which of his or her two Incentives to kill. There are definitely some surprises there that were very well-handled. In short, The Culling reads like a highly creative action movie—very fast-paced but with just enough detail to everything that you absorb the world in passing, as opposed to lingering in it.

As the first book in a series, I thought The Culling did a nice job of planting a lot of seeds, any of which could be taken up in the rest of the series. The fast pace purposely values action over depth of world-building and I didn’t find this a fault, but rather an intentional artistic choice. I would have been equally satisfied by a slower-moving book with deeper world-building, but the pace here really was compelling. I’m not usually one to care overly much for speed, but I literally could not put the book down. Like, I had to go to work and was reading while I peed, reading while I walked to the trolley, reading on the trolley, which makes me carsick, and reading in the elevator up until the moment I walked in the door of work.

The characters are great: Lucian is smart and stubborn, resentful of ever needing Digory’s help, but so desperate to save his brother that he feels he has no choice. Digory could have fallen into the strong, savior stereotype, but his political ideals make him far more interesting. The other three Recruits are all excellent, too. There’s Cypress, who is cold and controlled in response to the traumas in her life; Gideon, the boy who seems pretty together, but is revealed to have more of a stake in his Incentives than anyone could possibly know; and Ophelia, who is fucking terrifying.

what were this book’s intentions? did it live up to them?

The Culling Steven dos SantosNow, I’ve read several reviews of The Culling that were negative, denouncing it for being similar to The Hunger Games, and I do see the similarities, plot-wise, but I’m very much hoping I can dispel the notion that these plot similarities are the heart of The Culling. Yes: The Culling shares with The Hunger Games trilogy a deep horror of a totalitarian government, the suspicion that under such a regime its citizens are mere pawns who think they have a chance of winning their freedom but who are always already merely fulfilling a preordained role, and the understanding that in a world where adults are necessarily enslaved by the system, wanting to protect someone innocent from harm is the most powerful impetus to fight, even if you don’t believe you can win. What they share, then, is the kind of deep structure that produces genres and subgenres. The Hunger Games and The Culling are part of the same subgenre of dystopian literature—a subgenre that predates the former and will, I’m sure, postdate the latter. Mkay, done.

The reason I was so excited to read The Culling in the first place is that it’s one of the few pieces of YA speculative fiction that I’ve come across where the author’s intention was that being gay wasn’t going to be the point of the story. There has been a lot of talk lately about how some people believe the next phase of queer visibility in the literary community is to have queerness be simply a fact of a character, as opposed to an occasion for comment about struggle. I don’t think that normalization into non-issue signals progress per se, but I’m glad that people are at least talking about the issue.

Anyway, I was curious what dos Santos’ take was going to be and I came away pretty impressed. My suspicion of the ideal of framing queerness as being so normal as to be invisible is that it elides very important material consequences of struggle. In the world of The Culling, being gay doesn’t seem to be an issue, but rather than eliding struggle, the commonality of being gay simply shifts the threat (Lucian is almost victimized by prison guards who call him “pretty boy”), not invisiblizing it. Furthermore, I was really glad to see a novel that depended on a regime of totalitarian control, as opposed to knee-jerk gender conservatism, to construct its dystopia.

I’m not a very patient person, so I’m kind of cursing myself for reading The Culling when I will now have to wait at least a year to find out what happens next. I highly recommend that you curse yourselves too, and check out this truly supercharged dystopia. Flux, you’ve done it again—my hat’s off.

readalikes

The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins Catching Fire The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins Mockingjay The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, of course (2008-2010). Nuff said about this, I think.

Girl in the Arena Lisa Haines

Girl In the Arena by Lisa Haines (2009). This compelling book explores a neo-gladatorial society, complete with its culture of violence, through the eyes of one girl who has to fight not only for her freedom but for her family as well.

procured from: I received an ARC of The Culling from the publisher (thank you!) in exchange for an honest review. The Culling by Steven dos Santos is available now!

5 Comments
by Rebecca on April 10, 2013  •  Permalink
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Letter to My Younger Self: Read Slake’s Limbo!

A Review of Slake’s Limbo by Felice Holman (1974)

Slake's Limbo Felice Holman

by REBECCA, February 25, 2013

I first mentioned Slake’s Limbo in my post “YA Summer Survival Kit: A Crash Course for the Apocalypse: A List of Books That Teach Us How To Do Important Stuff,” in the section on how to Survive Urban(-ish) Perils. I hadn’t read the book when I wrote that post, only heard about it, so I’ve been keeping an eye out for a copy ever since. The other day—bless the Fates!—I found a copy in perfect condition at a used book store in town. It’s a really skinny book, so I almost overlooked it, but it was like it was waiting for me. Total time it took to read? Oh, maybe an hour, spread out because I kept it in the kitchen and read it while waiting for bread to toast, etc. But, man, did it pack a punch. And, while I think I might be too old to experience the “favoriteness” that I would have felt about this book if I had read it when I was ten or eleven—that glorious age of The Outsiders and Rumble Fish—I still thought it was wonderful.

Slake's Limbo Felice HolmanThirteen-year-old Aremis Slake is bullied at school and abused by his aunt, with whom he lives. Finally, one day, a group of bullies from school are chasing Slake and he ducks into the subway to escape them. He rides the trains idly all day and finally realizes that there’s no reason he needs to go back to his life at all. So he doesn’t. He finds a little alcove in a subway tunnel and lives there, reselling newspapers for money, ducking beneath the turnstiles to ride the rails, and making friends with a rat.

Slake’s Limbo is written in 1974, so there’s a very particular feel to the atmosphere of subterranean New York City. Its version of New York reminded me a little of Harriet the Spy‘s, written ten years earlier. There is the grit and dirt of the city here, certainly (far moreso than in Harriet’s Upper East Side), but also that air of more-innocent-times that seems to cling to narratives set before the eighties. Slake becomes acquainted with several regular newspaper customers on the train platform and even their interactions feel of another time. Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading a lot of very contemporary YA novels recently, but I’m feeling the distance between now and then a lot lately . . .

Slake's Limbo Felice HolmanAs I said, this is a very slim book—about 115 pages in my copy, with its (very) 1986 cover illustration—and maybe that’s why its lyricism hit me. We are told everything about Slake, a narrative device that is frowned upon. Yet, it’s a very personal book, and the description of Slake’s spaces takes his interiority. I kind of think that this is the same story that we might read in an Adam Rapp novel, say, but written from the outside-in rather than the inside-out. The heartbreak is all here, but its stated baldly and without sympathy as opposed to being expressed through action. Yeah, I think Slake’s Limbo and Punkzilla (2009) should be book friends.

Also, did I mention that the prose is 70% concrete and 30% feathers?:

Just before he awoke, it seemed, Slake would dream that a bird had come to the sooty window, open just enough to keep him from asphyxiating . . . that it had come to the sill and perched there, perilously near the inner edge so that it might, at any moment, fall or fly into the room. In his fear that this small creature of the air might blunder into this hostile place, Slake would open his mouth to cry out. As he did so, the bird woud lean forward and land in Slake’s mouth. Then Slake swallowed it. Slake would awake, gagging (7).”

Slake escapes from the hostility of his above-ground home and into a subterranean room of his own. Never good at anything in his life, he quickly finds himself quite capable of surviving, making enough money to eat, learning the routes of all the trains, even feeding a rat hungrier than himself. I can’t tell you precisely what made Slake’s Limbo so compelling to me, exactly. It’s simple, clean, and lovely, that’s all. I will now go to the library and try to check out everything else that Felice Holman has ever written.

Note: there is an audiobook version of Slake’s Limbo read by Neil Patrick Harris! How delightful.

readalikes

Punkzilla Adam Rapp

Punkzilla by Adam Rapp (2009). Runaway Punkzilla hops a cross-country bus from Portland to Memphis to see his dying brother for the first time in years. On the ride, he catalogues  his misadventures in Portland in a very unique voice.

Stick Andrew Smith

Stick by Andrew Smith (2011). When Stick’s abusive father finds out that his older brother, Bosten is gay, Bosten has to leave home for his safety. Stick sets off on a grueling road trip to find Bosten. My full review of Stick is here.

Skellig David Almond

Skellig by David Almond (1998). This is short British novel about a young boy whose sister is sick and who finds a bird-man-angel dripping with bugs in his shed, so of course I love it. The bird-man-angel eats Chinese food, for god’s sake. Skellig is a very simple story, but its elliptical quality makes it haunting and very re-readable.

Have you read anything by Felice Holman? How do I not know her? Please advise.

11 Comments
by Rebecca on February 25, 2013  •  Permalink
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La Isla Bonita! Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

A Review of Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Scholastic, 2011

Beauty Queens Libba Bray

by REBECCA, November 14, 2012

characters

too many Miss Teen Dreamers & their Enemies to name!

hook

One contestant represents each state in the Miss Teen Dream beauty pageant. When the Miss Teen Dreamers’ plane crashes, stranding them on a desert island with nothing but the contents of their makeup bags and their wits, some rise to the occasion and some, well, friends, some sink. Throw in a global conspiracy, young love, the sun, and several tons of hair removal product, and Beauty Queens is one explosive read.

worldview

Beauty Queens Libba BrayI confess: despite thinking the premise sounded pretty hysterical, I avoided Beauty Queens for months because of its cover. No matter how many glowing reviews I read that praised its social commentary, its diverse cast, and its great writing, I just kept thinking, Great. Another skinny white girl in a bikini. Until I ran into a friend who said he had the same concerns but that the book was great (thanks, P—!). So I (finally) gave it a chance, and holy stockings, Batman, am I glad I did!

I have to confess another thing: I don’t like comedy that much. I mean, don’t get me wrong: I’m not entirely humorless or anything; it’s just never my first choice. However, within two pages I could tell that I was reading a book that was really taking seriously the power that comedy can have as social commentary. Here’s the first passage that convinced me that Beauty Queens was going to be super funny:

“‘Hi. I’m Taylor Rene Krystal Hawkins, and I’m Miss Teen Dream Texas, the state where dreams are bigger and better—nothing against y’all’s states. I’m a senior at George Walker Bush High School and I hope to pursue a career as a motivational speaker.’

There was polite, automatic applause. A dazed girl beside Adina said, ‘I want to pursue a career in the exciting world of weight-management broadcast journalism. And help kids not have cancer and stuff.’

Miss Texas spoke again: ‘Okay, Miss Teen Dreamers, I know we’re all real flustered and everything. But we’re alive. And I think before anything else we need to pray to the one we love.’

A girl raised her hand. ‘J.T. Woodland?’

‘I’m talkin’ about my personal copilot, Jesus Christ.’

‘Someone should tell her personal copilot that His landings suck,’ Miss Michigan muttered. She was a lithe redhead with the pantherlike carriage of a professional athlete.

‘Dear Jesus,’ Taylor started. The girls bowed their heads, except for Adina.

‘Don’t you want to pray?’ Mary Lou whispered.

‘I’m Jewish. Not big on the Jesus.’

‘Oh. I didn’t know they had any Jewish people in New Hampshire. You should make that one of your Fun Facts About Me!’” (7)

Bray manages to pull off truly exquisite satire. The world of Beauty Queens isn’t quite a realist world; more like a reality TV world, in which some things are aided by the magic of editing and special effects:

“‘My head kinda hurts,’ Miss New Mexico said. Several of the girls gasped. Half of an airline serving tray was lodged in her forehead, forming a small blue canopy over her eyes.

‘What is it?’ Miss New Mexico checked to make sure her bra straps weren’t showing.” (8).

Drop Dead Gorgeous Kirsten DunstThe pacing of the book is extremely well-done. The tone is consistent throughout—sharp and funny but humanizing—but the book begins exactly where one would imagine: with the hilarity of the Teen Dreamers trying to survive on an island, fighting over flavored lip glosses and exalting in how the island’s lack of food is a great diet opportunity. From there, it moves to character development, and relationship building that makes the reader love some of the characters and love to hate others. Finally, it builds to full scale revolution, with the Teen Dreamers (and some mysterious pirates) working together to full-on topple an international conspiracy, nbd.

what were this book’s intentions? did it live up to them?

I can’t say enough times how skillfully Bray turns humor to the task of social commentary. The book’s clearest intention, I think, was to show how much people are able to grow when they find themselves in . . . unexpected situations. And Bray isn’t afraid to be a little cheesy about it. A large and diverse cast of characters stuck on an island together challenge each others’ expectations and encourage them to fully embrace their individualities.

Heathers Wynona RyderAnd while the Teen Dreamers are busy bringing out the best in each other, the audience slowly realizes that, although the joke is on the beauty queens for being, well, beauty queens—perhaps one of the groups of people that we still seem able to mock and stereotype without self-censure—by the end we are looking at one of the most diverse groups of teens to be found in a young adult novel. A black Teen Dreamer and an Indian Teen Dreamer go head-to-head trying to 0ut-non-white each other; a transgendered Teen Dreamer falls in love with a pirate; a Jewish Teen Dreamer plots . . . some stuff. And more.

“‘You think there might be cannibals here? Mary Lou whispered. . . .

‘Did you hear that?’ . . .

‘It came from over there!’ Shanti pointed to a copse just beyond the ring of totems. The sound came again: a grunting. Something was moving through the bushes. . . .

A willowy girl wrapped in a singed navy blanket stepped out into the open, moaning. Her skin was the same deep brown as the carved figures.

‘I’ll try to communicate,’ Taylor said. She spoke slowly and deliberately. ‘Hello! We need help. Is your village close?’

‘My village is Denver. And I think it’s a long way from here. I’m Nicole Ade. Miss Colorado.’

‘We have a Colorado where we’re from, too!’ Tiara said. She swiveled her hips, spread her arms wide, then brought her hands together prayer-style and bowed. ‘Kipa aloha.’

Nicole stared. ‘I speak English. I’m American. Also, did you learn those moves from Barbie’s Hawaiian Vacation DVD?’

‘Omigosh, yes! Do your people have that too?’

Petra stepped forward. ‘Hi. I’m Petra West. Miss Rhode Island. Are you okay?’

‘Yeah. I’m fine. A little sore and scratched up from where I got thrown into some bushes, but no contusions or signs of internal bleeding.’ Nicole allowed a small smile. ‘I’m pre-pre-med.’

Shanti frowned. She’d hoped to have the ethnic thing sewn up. Having a black pre-pre-med contestant wasn’t going to help her. She covered her unease with a wide smile” (13-14).

Anyhoo, as I hope you can tell, since I just keep quoting huge swathes of Beauty Queens’ hilarity, this is a unique novel that does a lot of fun and interesting stuff with genre, language, and character. It may or may not appeal, depending on taste; but it absolutely, 100% achieves what it sets out to do. Enjoy!

readalikes

Honestly, not really. I mean, Beauty Queens kind of feels like what would happen if Heathers, Drop Dead Gorgeous, and Lost had a baby and then put it up for adoption and it landed in a group home with a bunch of awesome badasses and learned how to fight. Then, when it got placed with a middle-aged couple that tried to stereotype it, it blew up its pearls in the microwave like Paige from Pump Up the Volume, without ever breaking a nail.

procured from: a kindle gift (thanks, mom!)

7 Comments
by Rebecca on November 14, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Rebecca on November 14, 2012

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The Year of the Beasts: I Turn to Stone When You are Gone

The Year of the Beasts
Cecil Castellucci & Nate Powell
Roaring Brook Press, 2012

review by Tessa

Characters
Tessa – starts the year out lucky, but the year’s events don’t follow this pattern.
Lulu – Tessa’s younger sister who seems to have nicer everything
Celina – Tessa’s best friend and a champion flirt
Charlie – Tessa’s crush, but he likes someone else very close to Tessa.
Jasper – Loner boy who hangs out in the woods.  Strangely attractive. Not that Tessa would admit it.

Hook
The carnival comes to town and after that night Tessa becomes a freak.  Is it all in her head? How can she stop everyone from turning to stone?

Worldview + What is this book’s intention and does it live up to that intention?

Tessa is forced to take Lulu along with her to the yearly fall carnival. She and Celina were supposed to spend all night sharing secrets and chasing boys – especially the pack of boys led by Charlie Evans.  The girls still fall in with these desirables despite Tessa’s little sister in tow. In an attempt to isolate herself with Charlie, Tessa suggests visiting the Curiosity Sideshow, where only two people are allowed in at a time. But Charlie gets in with Lulu as a partner. After that, Tessa’s world is thrown off balance.  She loves Lulu, but Lulu is eclipsing her in what feels like all aspects of her life – looks, boys, best friendship with Celina, and parental attention.

“Sometimes Tessa wished that she was the prettier sister. When Tessa looked at Lulu, she wondered why it was that Lulu got the better nose. The nicer legs. The shinier, straighter hair. Tessa worried sometimes that people felt sorry for her because she was not round-face, but made of angles. She dread that the truth might be that the arrangement of DNA hadn’t worked quite right on her parents’ first try for a baby, and she imagined that the combination of sperm and egg had worked better the second time around. Or worse, that maybe her parents had loved each other more when they had made Lulu.”

Before I got to buy and read this book I asked what my co-worker’s teenaged daughter thought of it. “She was afraid it was going to be about, you know, boys and does he like me, but it was more than that,” was her paraphrased answer (in a wonderful South African accent).  Boys  and Does he like me are Tessa’s focus as the book begins. Then, as her hopeful plans go awry and she’s left with regret and stifled jealousy, The Year of the Beasts reveals its true self. It’s about that creeping feeling when everything is going wrong and crumbling and no one else seems to notice.  When you don’t feel like you legitimately have anything to complain about but still feel like crying all the time and are composing whole perfect wounded rants in your head to say to no one.

Though not told in first person, the book achieves a wobbly reality in line with how Tessa must feel.  It alternates prose and comic chapters that, when read together, perfectly describe something that is part reality and part gritty parable.

Castellucci’s prose style is matter-of-fact about things and straightforwardly narrates situations that still end up with secret undertones.  It delves into lists of things that end up carrying emotional weight or revealing the thoughts of the characters who are looking at the things being listed. Its tone reminded me of fairy tales, especially the breezy Californian real world with a twist voice of Francesca Lia Block, where everyone possesses a kind of knowing, but everything remains mysterious despite it.  I can see it very much in this description from Beasts:

“Jasper Kleine . . . wasn’t with anyone because he was a loner. If he did hang out, he hung out with other lost boys. The ones who cut class and got high. The ones who rode their speedboats too fast on the river. The ones who had guitars and mountain bikes. The ones who wore pieces of leather tied around their wrists as if they had made a secret promise to themselves. These boys were the ones that everyone steered clear of because secretly everyone worried that strangeness was catching.”

The comic chapters are illustrated by the wonderful Nate Powell, who is no stranger to stories featuring people haunted by their own thoughts and obsessions. My first introduction to his work was Swallow Me Whole, a graphic novel about stepsiblings, schizophrenia, and family, among other things, and his most recent book, Any Empire, delves further into childhood and its wars and then twists time to connect real war with childhood. He draws with a fluid and sure line that always seems to imbue his characters with motion, even when they’re sitting at a desk or standing in a hallway. (There’s a gallery on his website).

In The Year of the Beasts he illustrates what appears to be a parallel story of Tessa’s, one where her hair is Medusa’s: made of snakes that can turn anyone who looks at her to stone. She stumbles through a school day trying to keep herself and the people around her intact, clearly hurting but not able to make herself tell her secrets.  In this reality, her sister appears as a mermaid and her crush a kind of minotaur.  It’s not clear how this connects to the prose reality until the close of the book, but it lets the reader follow emotional truths in a natural and evocative way. (Click on the link above to see previews).

What The Year of the Beasts has most in common with old fairy tales is that it goes to twisty, dark places.  It also has something in common with fables: Tessa learns a lesson at the end.  It’s not the one that I was expecting when I saw her cobbling together a secretive happiness midway through the book, and I’m not happy that she had to learn it the way she did.  But that’s her story, whether I like it or not, and it’s told beautifully.

Disclosure/Digression
I met Cecil Castellucci at a library event in 2006 or 2007 and she was really psyched to hear my name. So psyched that she wrote it down and promised to use it in a story. I’m not saying that this means that moment led to her naming this character Tessa. But I am going to choose to believe it for my own personal satisfaction about… having… a name?

Incidentally, Cecil Castellucci is funny and nice and really enthusiastic about comics. You should read her other books.

Readalikes

Weetzie Bat series / Francesca Lia Block

I’m feeling a lot of Witch Baby in Tessa’s character.

Lowboy / John Wray

I don’t know if this is a real readalike. It does concern a teenager who feels lost and isolated and has a personal crisis. Maybe I just want to read it again. But it came to mind, and it has a great cover with a drawing of a face.

Skim / Mariko & Jillian Tamaki

I could swear that Rebecca had recommended this book before, but I can’t find it. I’ll recommend it any number of times, just try me. Loss, friendship, and outsider status, set in a private school, which is a cousin to a boarding school. You know that we like those here at Crunchings & Munchings.

3 Comments
by tessabarber on October 12, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Book Review, Graphic Novel
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Posted by tessabarber on October 12, 2012

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Half My Head Is Quiet: Stick, by Andrew Smith

A Review of Stick by Andrew Smith

Feiwel and Friends, 2011

By REBECCA, August 10, 2012

Stick Andrew Smith

characters

Stark (Stick) McClellan: Born with only one ear, Stick is used to hearing the world a little slant

Bosten McClellan: A high school junior with a temper who wants to be free of his father

Emily Lohman: Stick’s best friend, who shows him how a family could be

Aunt Dahlia: Stick and Bosten’s great-aunt who lives in a cozy bungalow in California and introduces them to the wonders of surfing, sleeping in, and Evan and Kim Hansen

Evan & Kim Hansen: Twin surf angels who take Stick and Bosten under their wetsuited wings

hook

14-year-old Stick has always had his brother, Bosten, to look out for him, but when their abusive father learns that Bosten is gay, Bosten has to leave home. Once Bosten leaves, Stick takes his dad’s car and sets out to find him, thinking he headed to Aunt Dahlia’s house in California. Without much money or any connections, Stick finds himself in, erm, sticky situations (sorry!), which he handles because he has no other choice.

worldview

Saint Fillan's cave

Saint Fillan’s cave

Stick and Bosten’s cold, perfectionist mother and violent, exacting father have turned their house into an army barracks. There are rules to follow—the boys can’t have hair longer than half an inch, must always tuck in their shirts, can’t wear pajamas, can only shower on the weekends—and consequences if those rules are broken. Not only beatings, but being locked for days in what Stick calls St. Fillan’s room, the spare bedroom that is bare except for a sheeted cot and a bucket. Both Stick and Bosten, though, are warm, hungry for love beyond each other’s. Bosten is in love with his best friend, Paul, who runs hot and cold on him, and Stick feels awed and humbled by the love his best friend, Emily, shows him. The world of Stick, then, contains two extremes of love—the depths of joy that can come from intimacy as well as its poisonous inversion when intimacy is used as a weapon.

Mr. Zogs Sex waxThe structure of the book was particularly interesting: it’s kind of  folded in half. It’s divided into three sections, where the first is about Stick and Bosten’s life in Washington, the second about their visit to California to stay with Aunt Dahlia, and the the third the journey from the former to the latter, again, when Stick makes the same journey to follow Bosten. I bring this up because it facilitates one of my favorite thing about both Stick and Andrew Smith‘s work more generally (you can check out my review of The Marbury Lens here), which is that his novels take us to many different places, but each of them feels like the novel’s home when we’re in it. When Stick is in Washington, and the brothers are going to basketball games, getting into fights, and going to school in the damp chill, I feel fully sunk in that world as a reader; same with when they’re surfing in bright California. Then, when Stick travels to California to follow Bosten, the genre of the book really changes, from being an interpersonal drama to being a kind of adventure-quest-thriller. It doesn’t feel like a shift at all, though, but rather a natural outgrowth of the world and characters to which Smith has introduced us.

did this book live up to its intentions?

Stick Andrew SmithA thousand times, yes. Stick is a book that has so many things going for it that it’s hard to know where to begin. Wonderful characters who have deep relationships with each other? Check. Stick and Bosten’s conversations are as elliptical and offhand as tight siblings’ can be. Serious emotional and physical threats that bring out those characters’ depths and fears? Double check. Stick and Bosten’s father is chilling, but in a human way, so he can’t be written off as exaggeration or romanticization. Similarly, some of the people that Stick meets on his way to California (about which, obviously, I’m being quite vague, because I don’t want to give things away) exemplify the kind of terrifying way that the world feels out of your control at 14. Still, Stick is a survivor, so strongly drawn is he to get to California and make sure Bosten is all right (you might remember that I featured Stick in my list YA Summer Survival Kit: A Crash Course for the Apocalypse.)

Stick is also a beautiful exploration of very different types of masculinity. Throughout the book, we get many examples of how Stick and Bosten’s father things men should be, down to his conviction that men don’t wear pajamas or use shampoo. Bosten and Stick don’t agree with their father’s notions, but, as Stick says, they never even thought about the rules. It’s just the way things are. Being gay does not, of course, align with their father’s notions of how a man should act (although, further, we get hints that perhaps these rules are as much for Mr. McClellan to clarify for himself how he feels he must be as they are for his sons). Throughout Stick, then, Stick is exposed to multiple models of all the other ways to be a man there are besides his father’s, some violent, some desperate, some generous.

Stick is a wonderfully-written, exciting, and moving story about brothers, about need, and about the many ways we can rescue each other. I couldn’t recommend it more highly.

personal disclosure

I love love love books where siblings are best friends because my sister and I are planning to take over the world! Also, I love the cover of this book so much.

readalikes

Brothers Bishop Bart Yates

The Brothers Bishop by Bary Yates (2005). A totally amazing book about brothers, love, obligation, sex, archaeology, and the ocean.

Punkzilla Adam Rapp

Punkzilla by Adam Rapp (2009). The voice in Punkzilla is extraordinary. I sort of feel like Bosten and Punkzilla would meet and Bosten would adopt Punkzilla because he would remind him of Stick.

My Heartbeat Garret Freymann-Weyr

My Heartbeat by Garret Freymann-Weyr (2002). A short and lovely book about the relationship between Ellen, the older brother that she adores, and his best friend and lover.

procured from: bought

15 Comments
by Rebecca on August 10, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Rebecca on August 10, 2012

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Film Review: Beasts of the Southern Wild

A Review of Beasts of the Southern Wild, directed by Benh Zeitlin, (2012)

By REBECCA, July 23, 2012

Beasts of the Southern Wild

I’ve been eagerly awaiting Beasts of the Southern Wild for months, now, and I am thrilled to report that it did not disappoint.

The film is based on Lucy Alibar’s one-act play ”Juicy and Delicious.” Hushpuppy (played by Quvenzhané Wallis, who was only 5 when she auditioned, and beat out thousands of other Louisiana locals) lives with her father, Wink, on a Louisiana island called The Bathtub, on the wrong side of the levy. Hushpuppy’s mother left years before, and her father (played by Dwight Henry, another first-time actor who happened to own the bakery next to the casting offices where director Behn Zeitlin often bought bread) is ill and drinks all the time. When violent storms threaten to flood The Bathtub, many locals pack up and head out, leaving a small cadre behind, who have to survive in the wake of the flood, which kills animals and plants, and floods their homes.

Beasts of the Southern Wild Hushpuppy and the AurochsHushpuppy narrates the film and both the script and Wallis’ performance are haunting in their emotion and simplicity, as is Dan Romer’s score, which reviewers have compared to a kind of stripped-down Arcade Fire. Guided by her voiceover, we experience the events of the film through Hushpuppy’s eyes: after her teacher tells the children about the aurochs, great beasts trapped under the ice, Hushpuppy incorporates the aurochs into the landscape of The Bathtub, finally identifying as a beast herself in sympathy with them; when Hushpuppy hits her father, we see him fall down, as if the fury and hatred she feels toward him actually have the power to slay him. Beasts is magical realism, then, inasmuch as Hushpuppy’s reality is our access point to this world.

Waterworld Kevin Costner

Waterworld

More interesting, though, are particularities of the film that aren’t magical but are composed from a hodgepodge that seems almost post-apocalyptic: Hushpuppy and Wink putter through the floodwaters in a boat made out of the bed of a blue pickup truck atop floaters, grabbing fish straight from the water for food; they live in ramshackle huts that appear to be constructed of layer upon layer of detritus gathered from their surroundings; in the evenings, they drink and socialize with the other denizens of The Bathtub, eating crabs, shrimp, and crawfish by the bucketful and knocking back liquor as the waters lap their feet.

Despite its overwhelming critical success (it won this year’s Grand Jury Prize in drama at Sundance) Beasts of the Southern Wild has been criticized for what some see as a kind of cultural tourism in which the lives of poor Southerners are exoticized and made magic, rendering them curiosities instead of complex characters. While I recognize the impulse behind this critique, I found the film’s genre—a kind of magical realism meets regional adventure piece—to argue against it. Rather than using Hushpuppy, Wink, and the other inhabitants of The Bathtub to generalize about a group of rural Southerners, Beasts uses the intricacies of the region itself to portray one particular coming of age story. Throughout the film, Hushpuppy works to make her personal mark and archive her existence, drawing her story on the wall of her cardboard box hiding place and speaking it to us in the voiceover: “In a million years,” she tells us, “when kids go to school, they’re gonna know that once there was a Hushpuppy and she lived with her daddy in The Bathtub.”

Beasts of the Southern Wild Hushpuppy and WinkSimilarly, Beasts has also been held up as an example of a director aestheticizing poverty, as the film finds exquisite beauty in scenes dominated by dirty, broken places, and muddy, hungry people. This critique is by no means a new one, and rests, it seems, on the troubling assumption that just because a place is poor it is necessarily immune to beauty. Further, this critique seems to reveal an anxiety on the part of viewers that they might find the suffering of others beautiful, be it Wink’s ever-further protruding cheekbones that catch the dim light like a wood carving in Beasts, or those of the concentration camp prisoners in Schindler’s List. Rather, the cameras of Beasts’ director and cinematographer seem to unfailingly find precisely the beauty of The Bathtub and its inhabitants that makes Wink and the others who stay cling so ardently to their home, despite the attempts of all forces to drive them from it. It is beauty, yes, but a fierce and treacherous beauty that betrays all attempts to control it—a sublime beauty, like the cleaving of the immense glaciers that Hushpuppy imagines frees the aurochs from their icy prisons.

Beasts of the Southern WildNot tourism, then, nor aestheticization, but a kind of joyful tramp—as only children can—through the mud connecting Hushpuppy’s home, her school, a much-maligned rescue center, and a floating paradise of catfish and women that brings Hushpuppy a kind of peace, finally allowing her to return to The Bathtub on her own terms rather than her father’s, a pack of fierce and loving girlfriends around her.

At its most explicit, Beasts of the Southern Wild is a critique of the institutionalized blindness to the populations of certain regions and the hypocrisy of rescue-efforts that value the lives they would choose for those people over the lives those people choose for themselves. More subtly, though, it’s a story of how we make our own homes and our own histories despite—or perhaps because of—the attempts to obliterate them. Does it have moments of sentimentality? Yes. Echoes of other films with innocent or young protagonists? Sure. But Beasts is very much its own movie. I highly recommend Beasts of the Southern Wild, whether you’re in it for its politics, its story, its beauty, or its characters.

 

3 Comments
by Rebecca on July 23, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Rebecca on July 23, 2012

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Happy Friday the 13th!: Dead Sky Morning

A Review of Dead Sky Morning (Experiment in Terror #3) by Karina Halle

Metal Blonde Books, 2011

By REBECCA, July 13, 2012

Happy Friday the 13th, Crunchers and Munchers! Both the fear of Fridays and the fear of the number 13 have been around for a while. Put them together and you get a whole new slew of folks with what is know as friggatriskaidekaphobia (Frigga is the Norse goddess for whom Friday is named) or paraskevidekatriaphobia—that is, fear of Friday the 13th. Apparently one effect of this phobia is the loss of between 8 and 9 million dollars in business on Friday the 13ths. Notable people who died on Friday the 13th include Chet Baker, Tupac Shakur, and Julia Child—now that is the cooking show with a theme song that I want to see! Here’s a bit of horror in honor of the day. Read on, if you dare.

Dead Sky Morning Karina Halle Experiment in Terror

NOTE: This is the third book in the Experiment in Terror series, so you should read the first two books first! They are amazing! Here are my reviews of books 1 and 2: Darkhouse and Red Fox.

Also, Karina Halle wrote a short story called “The Benson” that is Experiment in Terror # 2.5 that can be read between Red Fox and Dead Sky Morning. You can download “The Benson” for FREE here, although it’s certainly not necessary to understanding Dead Sky Morning.

characters

Perry Palomino: A kick-ass (no, really, she knows martial arts) lady with a lonely heart and a yen for adventure

Dex Foray: Mustachioed ghost hunter and all-around delightfully infuriating enigma

Ada Palomino: Perry’s fashionista little sister with questionable taste in boys

and more creepies that you’ll have to read about . . .

hook

The weekend of her 23rd birthday finds Perry and Dex filming the next episode of “Experiment in Terror” camping on an island off the coast of British Columbia that used to serve as a leper colony. Perry is haunted not only by spirits of lepers past but also by an “anonymous” commenter on the EIT website who seems to hate her. Dex . . . well, it turns out that Dex has his own problems, and they’re spelled J-E-N-N.

worldview

As I mentioned in my reviews of Darkhouse and Red Fox, I began the Experiment in Terror series attempting to guard against freaking myself out by only reading them during the daylight hours. While that worked for Darkhouse, by the time I was halfway through Red Fox I knew I’d be reading once the sun had set. By the time I got to Dead Sky Morning, I was reading it in the middle of a freaking thunderstorm (that was back in the Spring, before the East Coast turned into a tropical wasteland) at 3am because IT’S SO GOOD I COULDN’T STOP!

Dead Sky Morning is the darkest of the three books so far and, as you know if you read the first two, that’s really saying something. For one thing, Perry has admitted her feelings for Dex to herself. That means that she (and the reader!) is able to absolutely marinate in the feelings of simultaneous attraction (love) and repulsion (he has a girlfriend and still flirts with Perry) that Perry feels for Dex. So, already the backdrop for the supernatural part of the book is a little tortured. On top of that, the majority of Dead Sky Morning takes place on D’Arcy Island, so Perry and Dex are totally alone, upping the sexual tension/torture factor astronomically.

D'Arcy Island

D’Arcy Island

At the turn of the century on D’Arcy Island, Chinese lepers were contained and then abandoned by the government (no surprise there), which dropped off supplies (and coffins) every now and again, but finally allowed some 50 people to die and then tried to cover it up. Needless to say, that’s a lot of potential creepyness for Perry and Dex to mine for the next episode of “Experiment in Terror.” However, when their boat is sabotaged, stranding them alone on the island, Perry and Dex get a lot more than they bargained for.

what were this book’s intentions? did it live up to them?

Holy rotting corpses, Batman, Dead Sky Morning is amazing. Intention #1: to write a super scary book. Success! Intention #2: to make me fall more in love with Perry and Dex than ever before. Success! Intention #3: to up the stakes in their relationship to the point where I wanted to rip my own face off because I couldn’t immediately start the sequel. Success! Well played, Ms. Halle. Well played.

So, firstly, I think the plot in Dead Sky Morning is the most interesting so far. The true story of the abandoned lepers, the lack of available info on the history of the island, and the revelation of what went on there are all captivating. Halle also does an amazing job slowly and subtly building the creepfest atmosphere of the island itself, not to mention it’s, er, otherworldly inhabitants.

“Now that D’Arcy Island was close enough to make out the little details, the nausea I was feeling down below was starting to creep up my throat again.

It looked like any other island that you’d see in the Pacific Northwest. But the strange part was, you knew it wasn’t. Even if no one had told me what had gone on there, the feeling of dread that washed over me, the animosity that just reeked out of the island’s pores, was unmistakable.

. . . From what I could see it didn’t look like much was out there. We were close to the island but not close enough to be hitting any rocks. But the water was rippling like a few opposing currents were working the surface.

. . . We were pretty much in the slight cove and the shore wasn’t too far away. I could make out the individual branches of the fir trees, the glowing green of the ferns nestled at the bottom sparkling in golden rays of sunlight, the smooth shapes of the rocks that made up the shoreline. Seagulls darted to and fro and with the sound of the motor at a minimum, I could hear the waves rolling the rocks in a rhythmic manner. It seemed so peaceful, so idyllic but . . .

Someone was watching us” (114-116).

Alongside the battle to film material for the show and also not die, Perry and Dex slowly come apart at the seams. Perry starts acting like she’s wearing the ring of doom around her neck (nerd alert), picking fights with Dex and generally being bloody, and Dex, for all his promises to keep Perry safe, is acting as if he thinks maybe it’s Perry  who’s crazy. Seriously, the stakes are really raised here, and Perry and Dex’s relationship is put to many a test.

personal disclosure

So, after wanting to punch myself in the face after reading books 1 and 2 in the series because I didn’t plan ahead and therefore had to wait to read the next installment, I went ahead and ordered the 4th Experiment in Terror book, Lying Season, right when I started Dead Sky Morning so that it would arrive in a few days, just in time for me to take it on vacation. This was both so that I could read it immediately, and also because I wanted to capitalize on sharing a room with my mom, thus lessening the fear factor. But, but, but, Amazon totally screwed me and delayed shipping Lying Season until I’d already left on vacation, depriving me of a desperately needed sequel and leaving me totally high and dry on the book front when I unexpectedly finished my plane book on the first day of the trip. This led to me wandering the streets of Charleston begging people to help me find a bookstore. Anyway, it was bad news, even though I eventually found a bookstore, read Emma Bull’s wonderful War For the Oaks (you can read my review here), and got to have Lying Season waiting for me when I got home. But still, it was stressful. The point is: do yourself a favor and learn from my mistakes.

readalikes

The Forest of Hands and Teeth Carrie Ryan

The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan (2009). First of all, such a totally awesome title. Mary lives in a fenced-in clearing in the forest where she and the other townspeople keep watch for when The Unconsecrated come. If they break the skin, you’re infected and become one of them—the only way to keep safe, the Sisterhood insists, is constant vigilance. But when The Unconsecrated breach the walls, Mary learns that their little clearing isn’t the last stronghold on earth; there is a world beyond these trees . . . if she can only reach it.The Marbury Lens Andrew Smith

The Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith (2010). When California teenager Jack dons the strange glasses given to him by a stranger in a London pub, he is transported to Marbury, a war-torn land where he must fight for his life and the lives of his friends. Love, love, love—my review is here.

Locke and Key Joe Hill Gabriel Rodriquez

Locke and Key, volume 1: Welcome to Lovecraft by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (2008). This graphic novel tells the story of Keyhouse, a New England mansion (on Lovecraft Island, in case you weren’t sure horrible things were going to happen) where doors open into different worlds. After the Locke family patriarch is brutally murdered, his bereft family returns to his childhood home and begins to delve into its mysteries. Gorgeous color!

procured from: bought

7 Comments
by Rebecca on July 13, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Rebecca on July 13, 2012

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YA Summer Survival Kit: A Crash Course for the Apocalypse

A List of Books That Teach Us How To Do Important Stuff

By REBECCA, June 18, 2012

knots! To Build a Fire

Most of my friends are divided on whether or not they liked survival books as kids. Some (like me) found them exhilarating and educational, where others found them boring and/or stressful. It seems clear to me, however, that with the current (YA lit-indicated) threat of apocalypse, the resurgence of DIY culture, and people’s obvious desire to prepare for the impending zombie hordes, it is time for a crash course in SURVIVAL!

To that end, I have collected some of my favorite YA titles that teach us how to do stuff. I can personally guarantee that if you read all these books you will have significantly improved your chances of surviving—nay, thriving!—in the face of a zombie attack, economic collapse, the overthrow of capitalism, extreme global climate change, or whatever generalized apocalypse is your own personal bête noire. In short, this is for your own good! Crunchings and Munchings is trying to save your life (don’t say we never did anything for ya)! Don’t worry—this list does not stop at digging tubers and chopping firewood; read on.

SO, YOU NEED TO . . .

Homestead rurally:

Little House in the Big Woods Laura Ingalls WilderThe Little House Books, Laura Ingalls Wilder (1932).

I don’t think I can possibly overstate how much useful stuff the Little House books can teach us. My favorites are the really descriptive ones, like when Pa makes bullets, and builds the smoker or their new house when they move to the prairie; when Ma makes head cheese (that is so disgusting) or weaves hats out of summer grass; when Mary and Laura churn butter. And, of course, there is my all-time favorite chapter, when they go to Laura’s grandparents’ house for sugaring time and they eat fresh maple syrup on everything, and make maple candy by pouring the syrup on pans of snow (which never worked for me no matter how many times I tried it with Mrs. Butterworth’s as a child). A must read for all hopeful homesteaders.

Survive off the land:

Hatchet Gary PaulsenHatchet, Gary Paulsen (1987).

The first in the Brian’s Saga, Hatchet introduces us to Brian Robeson, who must survive in the wilderness after the tiny plane he’s riding in crashes in the Canadian wilderness and the pilot dies—and let me tell you, it is a saga, indeed. Brian is wicked smart even though he’s only 13 and has nothing but (you guessed it) a hatchet to work with. I like this book because he makes lots of mistakes, but you can totally follow the logic of the things he does. In the sequel, The River, the government wants Brian to DO IT AGAIN! They’re so impressed by him that they want to watch what he does and use it to train military folks in impromptu survival. And Brian agrees. And, therefore, he is not as smart as Hatchet made me think he was, because obviously everything goes wrong and he has to survive again for real.

My Side of the Mountain Jean Craighead GeorgeMy Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George (1959).

Obviously, this cover looks like nothing that you would ever be caught dead reading, but I totally love this book. For New Yorker Sam, it is a damp, drizzly November in his soul, so he pulls an Ishmael and goes to sea—well, to the Catskills. And lives in a hollowed-out tree. And learns to live off the land. And has a falcon and a weasel for friends. I’ve loved this book since I was a kid, particularly because Sam’s feelings about the world and wanting to be in touch with himself are so sincere and lovely.

 

Island of the Blue Dolphins Scott O'Dell

Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O’Dell (1961).

Twelve year-old Karana is being evacuated with the rest of the population of the island she lives on (horrible!), but realizes that her brother has been left behind. She jumps off the boat to stay with him and ends up living on the island alone for years and years. While totally horrifying as a concept, Island of the Blue Dolphins is a really beautiful book, and the descriptions of how Karana finds food, uses bone and wood to make tools, and creates shelter are really interesting and lyrical. It’s based on the true story of a girl who survived on an island 70 miles off the coast of California for 18 years.

Survive off the land while fighting people who are trying to kill you:

The Hunger Games Suzanne CollinsThe Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins (2008).

One of the most exciting things about The Hunger Games series for me is seeing how the strengths of each district translate into the survival skills of those districts’ tributes. That Peeta’s cake decorating could provide some form of protection in the Games gave me hope that perhaps my skills of cat-petting, color-coding, editing, and my frankly impressive ability to watch an entire season of tv on dvd without stopping to sleep might some day prove as useful as Katniss’ skill with a bow or at climbing trees. Note: please do not disabuse me of this notion; it is all that stands between me and terror.

Tomorrow, When the War Began John MarsdenTomorrow, When the War Began, John Marsden (1993).

When Ellie and her friends get home from a camping trip in the Australian bush they find that their town has been invaded and their families taken prisoner. So, they have to survive off of what they can scavenge from the abandoned houses of their neighbors and pool their knowledge to fight back against the invaders. I am a fan of seeing how the little bits of seemingly useless knowledge we have can be put together with someone else’s seemingly useless knowledge to outsmart other people and make . . . you know, bombs and stuff.

The Grounding of Group 6 Julian F. ThompsonThe Grounding of Group 6, Julian F. Thompson (1984).

Check out that totally ’80s cover; I love it. So, five teens are sent to a boarding school by their parents to whip them into shape. Or so they think . . . duhn duhn duh! In actuality, this boarding school offers rich parents the chance to send their nuisance children there to be killed and disposed of in a terrible accident during the start-of-year camping trip. Nat, the only-slightly-older leader of this year’s group 6, has second thoughts and decides to help the kids survive in the woods instead, allowing them to escape the fate planned for them. This is a super fun (and super dated) book; after reading it I accused my parents (who were trying to send me to summer camp, horror of horrors) of trying to group 6 me. As you can see from my presence here today, I must have scared them into calling off the hit.

Escape in order to avoid certain death:

Long Live the Queen Ellen Emerson WhiteLong Live the Queen, Ellen Emerson White (1989).

So, long story short, I had no idea until like two weeks ago that this book, which I read as a stand-alone as a kid, was actually book three in a series (so now, of course, I have to go back and read the rest)—anyway, it works just fine as a stand-alone. Anyhoo, Meg’s mom is the president and Meg gets kidnapped. She has to escape, once it becomes clear that she won’t be let go, and then she has to make her way to help. I really like Meg as a character and her feelings and tactics while she’s held captive feel super realistic. She has to do some gnarly things to get away, but they’re all rendered logically, so it seems like a totally useful primer if one were ever to be kidnapped.

Survive urban(-ish) perils:

Slake's Limbo Felice HolmanSlake’s Limbo, Felice Holman (1974).

Slake is bullied at school and abused by his aunt, with whom he lives. Finally, Slake can’t take it any more and he runs away to live in the subways of New York City. I will confess to being straight up fascinated with any kind of off-the-grid living stories, so this is right up my alley. I mean, I read Jennifer Toth’s Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City and watched the documentary Voices in the Tunnels. Holman details how Slake gets food, makes shelter, and makes friends in 1970s underground New York.

The Borribles Michael De LarrabeitiThe Borrible Trilogy, Michael De Larrabeiti (1982).

Borribles are runaways who live hidden around London. They lie, cheat, and steal to survive, and they’ll always stay young unless they are captured by adults and have their (pointy) ears clipped, which is the ultimate horror for a Borrible. When creatures invade their Battersea neighborhood, a specially chosen group of Borribles sets out on a mission across London. Great world-building, and a super fun adventure story. The Borribles could teach anyone a trick or two about surviving on the streets, from nabbing fruit to breaking into buildings, and, of course, evading the capture of those most evil of creatures, adults.

Stick Andrew SmithStick, Andrew Smith (2011).

Fourteen year old Stick has always had his brother, Bosten, to look out for him, but when Stick finds out that Bosten is gay he realizes that Bosten has to leave home to survive their abusive father. Once Bosten leaves, Stick sets out across three states to find him. Without much money or any connections, Stick finds himself in, erm, sticky situations (sorry!), which he handles because he has no other choice. Anyone who reads C&M regularly knows that I basically fucking adore everything that Andrew Smith writes, so I’m thrilled whenever I compile a list that can include his marvelous books, which you should all be reading. You can check out my full review of Stick here.

Survive intergalactic perils:

Tunnel in the Sky Robert A. HeinleinTunnel In the Sky, Robert A. Heinlein (1955).

To pass their Advanced Survival class, Dr. Matson’s students have to take a practical final exam, which could take place on any terrain and in which anything goes, including weapons. But, when something goes wrong, Rod Walker and the rest of the class are stranded at an unknown place in the universe (AHHHH!) through a tunnel in the sky. With no promise of rescue, the class must try and survive in this unknown and, of course, hostile place. So, basically, this is close to my worst nightmare about space travel (my worst nightmare involving drifting in the vastness of space after my spacesuit has come untethered while I have enough of an air supply left to fully take in the complete and total existential horror before me that can only be ended by my slow and terrified death, but I won’t get into that).

Ender's Game Orson Scott CardEnder’s Game, Orson Scott Card (1985).

Although Orson Scott Card is a raging idiot, I am annoyed to say that Ender’s Game is one of my all-time favorite books. Monitored for a particular personality type and level of intelligence, Ender makes the grade and is sent to interplanetary Battle School to train for command in an army that will one day fight the next in a series of Bugger Wars with an alien species. Small for his age and cumbersomely smart, Ender is certainly one of the most iconic survivors in YA literary history. His survival takes the form of a dizzying understanding of strategy, including interpersonal psychological strategy: knowing why people do things and, thus, being able to predict what they will do. He’s an amazing (but still believable) character and anyone who wants to think a bit about how we use strategy in our daily lives should absolutely pick this up.

Take down a corrupt government institution and stop the nation from turning into a police state:

Little Brother Cory DoctorowLittle Brother, Cory Doctorow (2008).

Hacker Marcus and his crew are gaming in the wrong place at the wrong time—in San Francisco after a terrorist attack. After being taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security, they’re placed in a secret prison and interrogated mercilessly. After their release, Marcus realizes that the city has become a police state, with limited access to internet resources, surveillance of private citizens, and civil liberties violations up the wazoo. Marcus sets out to free the people (and the information), bending his not inconsiderable skills toward taking down the DHS himself. Awesome example of kids using the resources available to them to change the world. And Doctorow practices the freedom of information he preaches; you can download Little Brother here.

So, how about you—what are your indispensable YA survival guides?

14 Comments
by Rebecca on June 18, 2012  •  Permalink
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Posted by Rebecca on June 18, 2012

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Doctor, the Experiment Is A Success!: Red Fox

A review of Red Fox (Experiment in Terror #2) by Karina Halle

Metal Blonde Books, 2011

By REBECCA, May 11, 2012

Red Fox Experiment in Terror Karina Halle


NOTE: This is the second book in the Experiment in Terror series. You can check out my review of the first book, Darkhouse, here.

characters

Perry Palomino: A kick-ass (no, really, she knows martial arts) lady with a lonely heart,  a yen for adventure, and a seemingly limitless collection of concert tees

Dex Foray: Mustachioed ghost hunter and all-around delightfully infuriating enigma

Maximus: An old friend of Dex’s who shines some light on Dex’s mysterious past

The Lancasters: Owners of the ranch in Red Fox where Perry and Dex want to film

Bird: Rancher and all-around good guy, Bird is Perry and Dex’s guide to life (and death) in Red Fox

the hook

Perry and Dex survived shooting their first episode of Experiment in Terror and are now off to the little town of Red Fox, New Mexico where a Navajo couple are being tormented by scampering animals, a rainfall of stones, and the mutilated corpses of farm animals. Things between Perry and Dex are as . . . tense as ever, and now there is an old friend of Dex’s thrown in the mix. Will he come between them, or make them closer than ever? And why does trouble seem to follow Perry wherever she goes . . . ?

worldview

My cat, Dorian Gray, haunted by Red Fox

Yay, Perry and Dex are back! So, if you read my review of Darkhouse, the first book in the series, you know that I love Perry and Dex. When I finished Darkhouse, I smashed up against the terrible realization that I would now have to wait a week for the second book to be delivered once I feverishly ordered it. My apartment sounded something like this: “Gaaahooonooo! Idiot! Why didn’t you—gah! Damnit, Rebecca! Damn you, Karina Halle, for making me addicted” followed by a plaintive “mrow” from the cat as I slammed the book down in desperation.

And Red Fox is, I dare say, even better than Darkhouse. The characters are more solidified and their interactions have bigger stakes. Perry has finally been offered a promotion at work, but gets fired when she asks to work part time to accommodate filming the show on the weekends, so she’s feeling a bit fragile and pathetic. Dex is still dating Wine Babe Jenn, but clearly just as taken with our gal Perry as ever. Halle is truly a master of the I-love-you-you-total-infuriating-asshole-I-hate-you dynamic and it’s pure delight. With a healthy helping of terror, of course. The tip to film in Red Fox comes from Dex’s college friend (and former bandmate), Maximus, a tall, strapping, redheaded, flannel-wearing ghost whisperer. Dex and Max have had a falling out, causing tension among the three of them: tension of the hey-there! variety between Maximus and Perry, and the I-know-what-you-did-in-college variety between Maximus and Dex, even as Perry and Dex’s sexual tension grows astronomically.

Leap Year Amy Adams Matthew Goode

Hmm, we seem to be married . . .
Image: nerdgirltalking

This all plays out against the exciting backdrop of what Will Lancaster thinks are poltergeists on his ranch in Red Fox. Halle totally evokes the creepiness of the rural, Southwestern setting with its long stretches of dusty road, sudden animal encounters, and treacherous rocky landscape. As it seems clearer and clearer that they are not dealing with poltergeists but with something out of a Navajo mythology, the threats to Perry and Dex come from all sides. But that just means they have to scoot closer together. In bed. Because they have to pretend to be married for the sake of propriety like in that movie Leap Year with Amy Adams and Matthew Goode. Just saying.

what was the book’s intention? did it live up to that intention?

Fox

I am scary
Image: Nicole Duplaix, Nation Geographic

Where Darkhouse seeded the notion that maybe, just maybe, Dex is mental and shit is all in his head, Red Fox lets you know he’s mental and that it’s not all in his head. Dude, Red Fox is scary—and it ain’t just the ghosties! One of the things I like the most about this series is the way that Halle weaves together all the different scaries instead of relying only on the supernatural. So, you’ve got your supernatural scary, sure, but then there’s also the fear of loving someone who may not love you back; the fear that people you trust may betray or even kill you; and the terrible garden-variety fear of encountering a bunch of drunks in a bar of an evening. Red Fox is the total package.

“My eyes flickered open. Something had woken me up . . . Then I felt something brush up against my foot . . .

I took a deep breath and slowly turned over.

I felt the life being sucked out of me.

There was an animal sitting at the foot of the bed, just six feet away, on top of my feet . . .

It was a fox. I couldn’t see it clearly but I knew that’s what it was. A fox, about the size of a collie, sitting on its hindquarters, ears creating a pointy silhouette. It looked right at me. Its eyes were a hazel color but they didn’t glow like a normal animal. They locked with mine. It was like looking into the eyes of someone I knew.” (90)

personal disclosure

So, I’ve been reading this series like a madwoman, y’all—it is addictive and each book just keeps getting better! When I was reading Darkhouse I was careful: I relegated my reading to daylight hours because I live alone and have super gruesome nightmares anyway, so I didn’t want to totally freak myself out. Then, with Red Fox, I couldn’t make myself stop when it got dark, so I huddled under a really big blanket and made my cat sit with me so I wouldn’t be too scared. By Dead Sky Morning, the third in the series (review coming soon!), I was reading it at 3am during a violent thunderstorm right before I went to bed. And that, my friends, is the spiral of addiction. Cheers.

Perry Palomino Red Fox Experiment in Terror

BONUS! This just in: after you read Red Fox, you can check out Halle’s re-writing of one of the scenes in the book from Dex’s perspective posted here on What the Cat Read!

6 Comments
by Rebecca on May 11, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Book Review
Tagged , , , , ,

Posted by Rebecca on May 11, 2012

http://crunchingsandmunchings.wordpress.com/2012/05/11/1191/

We Love! We are uncomfortable and we respect that!: Joint Review of Will Grayson, Will Grayson Part 2

Rebecca!I was happy when you mentioned wanting to joint review Will Grayson, Will Grayson (by John Green & David Levithan), not only because we are two people and Will Grayson and Will Grayson are two people, but because I remember loving the book so much. (Read R.’s original post here.)

image from the Will Grayson tumblr

 

Of course, the problem is that I tend to read things far too fast, and I was worried that I wouldn’t have any points to bring up about reading the book because it would be far in my foggy past (April of 2010).  The only thing I wrote about it on GoodReads was “John Green and David Levithan are so good at making the world seem full of potential goodness, while staying true to the suckiness of life. Every time I read one of their books my heart grows 3 sizes. It’s gotten to the point where I have a medical condition.”  Ha ha! Good one, me.

Luckily I have library access. So I plucked the book from its shelf and started reading it at lunch today. I KNOW, I know.  But within 14 pages I already had so much stuff to write about. But first I must say: don’t cry into your lemonade! If anything, cry onto your pretzel, because they are both salty.  And here’s a tip: whenever I don’t want to cry, I visualize frogs sitting in my immediate vicinity. Little frogs. Big hulking giant frogs.  It’s 80% effective at distracting me from sobbing, which is good, because once I get started it’s hard to stop.

don't cry, think about this frog from the Open Clip Art Library.

I digress. And so does WG–that’s one of the things that pulled me into the narrative, and I think it’s a key part of the WG2M.  For instance, WG starts off the book by quoting his dad’s aphorism: “You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose” and then on page 21 we get back to WG’s point of quoting that aphorism in the first place. To be fair, this could also just be foreshadowing.  But the way that WG narrates, it’s like clicking your way through tabs on a browser – you want to explore all the links, but it makes for a wonderfully digressive narrative.

Another thing about the WG2M, what I referred to in my Goodreads review as “staying true to the suckiness of life”, is also something that made, and makes, me uncomfortable about reading WG’s parts of the book.  He’s not that great of a friend.  On the first page he begins expounding on his two themes concerning Tiny Cooper – WG sees Tiny as primarily 1. Large and 2. Gay, and instead of just being accepting of Tiny Cooper, he brings it up all the time so he can reassure his audience that he’s accepting. He’s so accepting he can constantly joke about it!  This is my least favorite type of “friendly” behavior.  WG also mentions that he went so far as to defend Tiny’s right to be gay and play football in the school newspaper, so it’s clear that he’s not all superficially, insecurely okay with the large gayness of Tiny Cooper.  He goes on and on about how inconvenient it is to be friends with someone so tall and large and gay (are you sick of it yet? Imagine how Tiny feels) and how Tiny is not a friend he would choose.

However, if I remember correctly, Tiny calls him out on this behavior later in the book, and that’s another thing that I love about it. AAAAND, as the story progresses further, we see that Tiny is not the greatest friend sometimes, either. He’s very wrapped up in his crushes.  He’s wildly reactionary to every emotion that courses through him.  And a side effect of that is that all social interaction will revolve around Tiny Cooper, making it easier for WG to not seriously pursue any other friendships.

Whether I like their behavior or not, the fact is that within a couple pages, I’m totally involved in these people and they are real to me. It’s real behavior, it’s familiar to anyone who has had friends at any point in their lives, and it’s detailed without telling me all the details. It’s detailed in the right places.  It puts me at the lunch table with Tiny and WG and lets me figure it out, and then gives them senses of humor! WG is fond of these little asides at the end or slipped into the middle of his regular descriptions that crack me up:

“I say, ‘Mom this is a historical event. History doesn’t have a curfew,’ and she says, ‘Back by eleven,’ and I say, ‘Fine. Jesus,’ and then she has to go cut cancer out of someone.” (9).

wg has the talent of being humorously explanatorily exasperated:

“i do not say ‘good-bye.’ I believe hat’s one of the bullshitist words ever invented. it’s not like you’re given the choice to say ‘bad-bye’ or ‘awful-bye’ or ‘couldn’t-care-less-about-you-bye.’ every time you leave, it’s supposed to be a good one. well, i don’t believe in that. i believe against that.” (23).

To illustrate the flow of the book, I’ll give you a perfect Moment, convincingly written, an amalgam of digression and flow (which is why I have to quote all of it.):

photo of Chicago by flickr user anneh632

“Tiny Cooper lives in a mansion with the world’s richest parents. I don’t think either of his parents have jobs, but they are so disgustingly rich that Tiny Cooper doesn’t even live in the mansion; he lies in the mansion’s coach house, all by himself. He has three bedrooms in that motherfucker and a fridge that always has beer in it and his parents never bother him, and so we can sit there all day and play video game football and drink Miller Lite, except in point of fact Tiny hates video games and I hate drinking beer, so mostly all we ever do is play darts (he has a dartboard) and listen to music and talk and study. I’ve just started to say the T  in Tiny when he comes running out of his room, one black leather loafer on and the other in his hand, shouting, ‘Go, Grayson, go go.’

“And everything goes perfectly on the way there. Traffic’s not too bad on Sheridan, and I’m cornering the car like it’s the Indy 500, and we’re listening to my favorite NMH song, ‘Holland, 1945,’ and then onto Lake Shore Drive, the waves of Lake Michigan crashing against the boulders by the Drive, the windows cracked to get the car to defrost, the dirty, bracing, cold air rushing in, and I love the way Chicago smells–Chicago is brackish lake water and soot and sweat and grease and I love it, and I love this song, and Tiny’s saying I love this song, and he’s got the visor down so he can muss up his hair a little more expertly.  That gets me to thinking that Neutral Milk Hotel is going to see me just as surely as I’m going to see them, so I give myself a once-over in the rearview.  My face seems too square and my eyes too big, like I’m perpetually surprised, but there’s nothing wrong with me that I can fix.” (9-10)

And I feel like I’ve already written too much (and all of it about WG and not wg) but I will mention that the 3rd element that makes me love the book and make it a 5 star book for me (remember our elements are 1. digression 2. realism about the suckiness of even friends) is the addition of People Creating Things.  There’s nothing more satisfying to read about than teenagers creating things–treehouses, forts, treehouse forts, conceptual art happenings, very detailed oil paintings, novels within novels… I say teenagers because I have less joy in reading about college professors struggling with creating things. That’s a separate genre.  Creation of a project is the crux of many a teen movie, except the person is usually a rag tag sports team and the Thing they are Creating is an Underdog Victory.But here the person is Tiny Cooper, and the thing is a musical.  You could also say that the Will Graysons are creating themselves in this book, coming out from under their wallflower/caustically depressed disguises to be in the world more authentically.  But more literally, it’s about a musical called Tiny Dancer: The Tiny Cooper Story.

what can I say, I love the Open Clip Art Library.

Fake musicals are great excuses to be as silly as possible… IN RHYME, which is why Forgetting Sarah Marshall is such a great movie (although I’ve heard that the Dracula puppet musical is a real thing that Jason Segel wrote apart from the movie).  It also makes sense that, although the book is not about Tiny Cooper, Tiny Cooper is the glue of the book, and the most outsized example of someone trying to find where they fit in the world, which is a theme of the whole book anyway, so his musical is the plot device that ended up making my heart swell 3 sizes that day when I read the book.

That’s my non-critical, slapdash analysis of why I loved Will Grayson, Will Grayson.  I look forward to re-reading it this week.

8 Comments
by tessabarber on May 2, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Book Review, Joint Review
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by tessabarber on May 2, 2012

http://crunchingsandmunchings.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/will-grayson-response/

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