Read All The Things! Reviews

I thought I understood what I was getting into when I started Dracula. I knew the plot and was familiar with the characters. It’s hard to read as much horror as I do and not know about Dracula, even if you’ve never read the original. I expected to love this novel because it has influenced pretty much every modern horror book in existence.

I did not expect to be really, really bored.

“We learn from failure, not from success!” – Dracula

The novel starts out in a promising way and actually hooked me very quickly. The story is told in epistolary form by a group of characters who seem to be obsessive diarists. Jonathan Harker, a lawyer, is keeping a journal of his business trip from England to Transylvania. His boss sent him to help a rich client—Count Dracula—buy real estate in London. After a harrowing journey where Harker is pursued by wolves and strange lights, he arrives at Dracula’s castle. The trip does not get any easier after that. The Count has some strange habits and even stranger companions. Harker is locked in a room and held prisoner.

What I like most about this section is the atmosphere. There is a heavy sense of foreboding. Jonathan Harker is a resourceful guy, but you get the feeling that even if he escapes from the castle, getting home won’t be simple. The start of the novel has the suspense and horror the synopsis promises. Also, Dracula is a severely creepy dude. It’s interesting to see the seeds of all the horror movie tropes that grew out of this story.

After the first part of Harker’s journal, the plot slows down so much that the reader will be tempted to scream in frustration. Dracula heads to London and starts turning beautiful women into vampires. The male friends and family members of the women take it upon themselves to kill Dracula and stop the vampire epidemic. Unfortunately for the reader, vampire hunting turns out to be tedious business. And, it requires a surprising amount of paperwork.

This is one of those books where the characters spend more time talking about what they’re going to do than actually doing it. Vampires aren’t a big part of the story. Most of the book consists of characters giving multi-page speeches, men sobbing uncontrollably in manly ways, repetitive descriptions of “mysterious” illnesses, and travelogues. I just wanted to see someone kill a vampire! When the vampire killing (finally!) does happen, it’s rushed and disappointingly easy. Honestly, by the end of the story, I was on team Dracula. I wanted the vampire to put the characters out of their grief-stricken, constantly weeping misery.

“Loneliness will sit over our roofs with brooding wings.” - Dracula

I also struggled with the epistolary form of the novel. I didn’t find it believable. These characters talk a lot. Who on Earth is going to remember a 10-minute speech and write it word-for-word in their journal? Why not summarize it? And why bother capturing the speakers’ annoying dialects? It would have taken the characters days to write these unnecessarily detailed journal entries. Why are they writing in their diaries when there is a vampire epidemic happening? The heroes of this story often behave like preteen girls, but seriously? Put down the diary and do something already.

“I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air.” - Dracula

Also, since Dracula doesn’t keep a journal, one of the journal-keeping characters has to suddenly become psychic at the end of the book in order to tell the reader what Dracula is doing. This is a strong sign that the novel’s structure is broken.

Maybe I would have found this horror story scarier if I had lived in Victorian-era England. Reading Dracula made me wonder if people’s fears are based on their cultures. Are there universal fears? Maybe Dracula isn’t scary to me because I’m from a different time and culture than the intended audience. Based on this book, I’d say the Victorians were scared of technology, female sexuality, and anything that conflicts with Christian values. Since I’m not scared of those things, maybe this novel was boring for me and completely terrifying for the Victorians.

Dracula wasn’t anything near what I was hoping for, but I’m happy it has inspired so much awesome modern horror. Unless you’re a Victorian, I’d suggest reading those books instead.

“Once again . . . welcome to my house. Come freely. Go safely; and leave something of the happiness you bring.” - Dracula

I call myself a Stephen King fan (not his number one fan), but I had somehow never read Misery. Oops. I have seen the movie several times, though, if that counts. I found a copy of the book at a used bookstore and started reading it immediately. It did not disappoint.

Most of you know this story, right? A bestselling author, Paul Sheldon, gets drunk and crashes his car in the remote mountains of Colorado. He wakes up in the home of Annie Wilkes, his “Number one fan.” In exchange for saving his life, Annie wants Paul to write a book especially for her. If he doesn’t do it correctly, she has a fondness for amputating limbs . . .

“I am in trouble here. This woman is not right.” – Misery

Annie Wilkes is one of the most iconic horror villains (and most intense bookworms) of all time. There’s a good reason for her infamy: She’s completely terrifying! From the outside, she doesn’t seem threatening. She’s a frumpy middle-aged woman who’s scared to say a curse word. But once Paul and the reader get to know Annie, her unpredictability becomes unsettling. Any tiny thing can get her angry. She’s freakishly strong and not as simple-minded as she acts. The suspense in this story builds slowly, but there’s always a sense of anticipation. Annie is so violently insane that the reader never knows what she will do next. Each of Paul’s missteps causes him to lose a body part.

This book is surprisingly self-reflexive. I wasn’t expecting that when I started. It’s a book about books and the writing process. Paul is a 1980s Scheherazade who must please Annie with his stories to save his own life. Misery is basically a 300-page love letter to the writing process. Well, it’s a love letter interspersed with gory amputations and murder-by-lawnmower, but it’s still a love letter.

Annie takes everything from Paul. She strips away his smoking and drinking habits and prevents him from leaving her house. She destroys his body and gets him addicted to painkillers. The only thing she can’t take from him is his desire to create. Writing gives him a reason to live and allows him to mentally escape from his horrible situation. Even though Paul is in constant danger, he writes the best book of his career because he needs to write to stay sane. Writing is safe. It’s the only thing he can control. The reader can really feel his passion.

“In a book, all would have gone according to plan . . . but life was so fucking untidy — what could you say for an existence where some of the most crucial conversations of your life took place when you needed to take a shit, or something? An existence where there weren't even any chapters?” – Misery

Misery is fiction, but it provides insight into the mind of an author. If you don’t care how books are made, you might find parts of Misery slow. There is a lot of writing-talk. Luckily, I like that kind of insider knowledge, so I have no problem with it. It feels very honest.

In addition to being about writing, this book is about obsession. I’ve never really thought about how obsession can be both a positive and negative thing. Paul’s obsession with writing heals him while Annie’s obsession with Paul destroys him. They use their obsessions as weapons against each other. It’s an interesting battle-of-wills. The one who wins is the one whose obsession is strongest.

Like most Stephen King books, this one is hard to put down. Annie and Paul are well-developed characters who are eerily realistic. Their relationship is ferocious. The plot took a little while to get going, but once I was hooked, I read most of the book in one sitting. It’s compulsively readable.

The scariest horror stories are the lifelike ones. What I love most about Misery is that it’s easy to imagine something like this happening in real life. 

Misery isn’t my favorite Stephen King book, but it’s pretty high up on my list. I’m glad I finally had a chance to read it.

One of the goals I gave myself for this year was to get out of my reading comfort zone. I prefer dark, fast-paced, violent books. If you threw a dystopian or horror story at me, I’d be all over that thing in a second.

So, to get out of my comfort zone, I thought I’d pick up I’ll Meet You There, which is a  . . .

(*Gulp* *deep breath*)

Romance.

That’s right. Romance. Romance is really not my thing. I have a hard time making myself care about people’s relationship drama. However, I’ll Meet You There is supposed to be a war romance, so I thought it might have enough blood and guts to get me through. One of the characters is missing a leg. That seems pretty dark, right? I thought I could handle a romance if there is more than just love-related angst going on.

There are two narrators in this story, but the main one is Skylar, a recent high school graduate who is working at a motel for the summer. The other narrator is Josh, Skylar’s former coworker. He joined the military, went to Afghanistan, lost his leg, and came home. Now he is working with Skylar at the motel again. Before Josh joined the military, he and Skylar didn’t get along, but the military has changed him—for better and for worse. If Skylar and Josh want their relationship to work, they have a lot of challenges to overcome.

The characters are brilliant. I love that they are all underprivileged kids who are doing whatever it takes to survive. It would have been so easy for the author to write stereotypes, such as the “irresponsible teen mom” and the “flawless war hero.” Luckily, there are no stereotypes in this book. Dylan is an awesome teen mom, and Josh is a jerk. I kind of love that I hate Josh. I would never date a party boy who casually calls people “faggot,” but he has enough redeeming qualities that I can understand why Skylar loves him. All of the characters are realistically flawed.

“. . . if you could make a beautiful piece of art from discarded newspapers and old matchbooks, then it meant that everything had potential. And maybe people were like collages—no matter how broken or useless we felt, we were an essential part of the whole. We mattered.” – I’ll Meet You There

 

“Why is it that some people in the world get to wake up in beautiful houses with fairly normal parents and enough food in the fridge while the rest of us have to get by on the scraps the universe throws at us? And we gobble them up, so grateful. What the hell are we grateful for?” – I’ll Meet You There

Even though I like the complex characters, this book reconfirmed why I don’t read romance. The main emotion I felt while reading was boredom. Josh and Skylar’s makeups and breakups didn’t hold my attention at all. The book was very flat for me. I kept waiting for something big to happen, and nothing did. The climax of the story occurs when the characters fail to have sex at the ideal moment. The reasons behind their sex-failure are interesting, but I just couldn’t make myself care about their relationship and the ramifications of their unsuccessful sex attempt.

“But my life had suddenly become a Taylor Swift song: breakups and heartache and other girls.” – I’ll Meet You There

(I dislike Taylor Swift songs just as much as I dislike romance novels.)

Getting back to the positive, one part of the book that I really appreciate is that Josh’s mental illness isn’t a “get out of jail free card.” As someone who has a mental illness, I can’t stress how important this is. An illness does not give you license to hurt somebody. If your illness is causing you to be a jerk, then it’s your responsibility to fix it. Immediately. It’s not other people’s job to put up with your horrible behavior. I was cheering every time Skylar stood up to Josh. No matter what he’s been through, he’s not allowed to hurt her.

One of the biggest themes in this book is making peace with the past. Sometimes bad things happen, and you just have to work with what you have. That’s a valuable lesson for young readers to learn.

For me, this book was pretty underwhelming, but if you’re a romance fan, you might get a lot more out of it than I did.  

I may be developing a mild obsession with Marcus Sedgwick’s books. Seriously, why aren’t more people talking about his work? It’s awesome.

In She is Not Invisible, sixteen-year-old Laureth and her seven-year-old brother fly from their home in London to New York to find their father. He went missing while researching coincidences for a book he is writing. It’s up to Laureth and her brother to make sure he’s safe. The biggest obstacle to finding him is Laureth’s blindness. Since she can’t see, she must rely on her intelligence and her brother to navigate through the unfamiliar streets of New York City.

This book is short, fast-paced, not romance-based, and kept me up way too late at night. It first got my attention because it was described as a “YA thriller,” and I haven’t read many of those. It’s a very compelling story. I would have happily read it in one sitting if I hadn’t been so sleepy.

Laureth is an easy character to root for. She has been blind since birth and relies on her other senses to get around. It’s obvious that the author has done a lot of research on blindness. Laureth has realistic strengths and weaknesses. She knows how to live with her disability, but she’s still insecure about it. I love watching her become more self-confident as the story progresses. She also has to deal with a lot of ignorance from people who can’t understand that she has a different way of navigating through the world. They expect her to behave exactly like a sighted person and get frustrated at her when she can’t.

“People think I have so much faith in myself, but I have none. I have no faith in myself, or in what I can do, and yet people think I can do anything I want.

That's how I seem, but it's an illusion. It's an act, nothing more.” – She is Not Invisible

This book is marketed as YA, but it seems a little young to me. It’s not quite middlegrade, though. I guess it could be called “young young adult.” It doesn’t have the same sense of constant danger as other YA thrillers; it requires a lot of suspension of disbelief; and things are wrapped up neatly at the end. This is probably a perfect transition book for kids who are between middlegrade and young adult. It has the YA writing style without the heavy themes often found in YA.

The suspension of disbelief is what I struggled with most in this book. I didn’t believe that two kids would fly to New York because their father—who seems to have a history of irresponsibility—won’t answer his phone. I didn’t believe that airport security would be so lax. Laureth’s brother’s “ability” seems to exist only to make Laureth’s life harder and doesn’t play enough of a role in the story. I have a feeling that these criticisms are coming from my adult-brain, though. As a child, I would have had an easier time suspending my disbelief.

Despite a few problems with this one, I will gladly continue reading Marcus Sedgwick’s books. Also, I’d highly suggest that all wannabe writers read She is Not Invisible. Since the narrator is blind, there are no visual descriptions in the book. The author has to rely on Laureth’s other senses to let the reader know what’s happening. This is well-done and interesting to read.

This review is of the English translation of a German book.

Well, that was depressing. I’ve been on a lifelong quest to find the most depressing book in the history of books, and this one has been recommended to me many, many times. I’m not convinced that it’s the most depressing book ever, but it has to be near the top of the list. These quotes capture the tone of the story nicely:

“We are not youth any longer. We don’t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing. We fly from ourselves. From our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces.” – All Quiet on the Western Front

 

“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.” – All Quiet on the Western Front

“Abyss of sorrow”? Depressing, right?

This novel tells the story of Paul Bäumer, who joined the German army as a teenager and was sent to fight in WWI. After years of endless trench battles and near-death experiences, Paul’s body and mind start falling apart. He tries to be a good soldier, but as he watches people die, he can’t help questioning the point of this war.

If you’re looking for an authentic war story, I’d recommend this one. The author joined the German military as an eighteen-year-old and fought on the Western Front during WWI. He spent a lot of time in military hospitals after nearly getting killed by shrapnel. He knew what he was talking about when he wrote this book.

The best part of All Quiet on the Western Front is how it captures both the personal and impersonal nature of war. Paul is fighting because the government of his country told him to fight. The government’s enemies are not his enemies. He has no reason to hate the people he’s killing. Paul is very aware that killing people is just a job that he was given, and the people who are trying to kill him are just doing the job they were given. The war changes the course of his life forever, but he has no personal reason to be there. It’s just a job.

“Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony—Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?” – All Quiet on the Western Front

Paul understands that government officials are making all of the decisions from the safety of their offices while the soldiers do the dirty work. Governments are the real enemies, not the people in the opposite trench.

“It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men.” – All Quiet on the Western Front

The book also does a nice job of showing the trouble that soldiers have adjusting to normal life after they leave a war. Most of this book consists of droning, hypnotic violence. There are constant explosions, gunshots, and people dying. When that suddenly goes away, both the characters and the reader are unsettled. The book captures how difficult it is for young soldiers to go from fighting for their lives to sitting in their childhood bedrooms, staring at their bookshelves and wondering what to do next.

One of the problems that I have with translated books is that I never know if an author intended a book to be written a certain way, or if the translator translated it that way. Some parts of this book seem oddly formal: the narrator uses “thee” and “thou.” I wondered why. I know this is an old book (first published in 1928), but it’s not that old. The random formal moments seem weird to me. I don’t know if the original German version is like that.

I also wish we got to know the characters better. I realize that personality probably takes a backseat when you’re trying not to get exploded, but I didn’t feel anything for the characters. Most of them are names and not much else. Even the narrator lacks personality.

The cover of this book calls it “The Greatest War Novel of All Time.” I’m not sure about “All Time,” but if you’re interested in war novels, this is a must-read. It has the authenticity that only an author who has been there, done that can capture.

First, this graphic novel gets bonus points for using sexual innuendos as character names. I have the mental maturity of a twelve-year-old, so that kind of humor is very much appreciated.

Nimona is a bloodthirsty shapeshifting creature with the goal of becoming a supervillain. She teams up with the most evil man in the kingdom, Lord Ballister Blackheart, and they set out to prove that the Institution of Law Enforcement and Heroics is corrupt. But, when Nimona gets angry, even Lord Blackheart has to admit that his sidekick may be too evil to handle.

Nimona takes well-known fantasy tropes and flips them on their heads. What is “Good” and what is “Evil”? Who decides these things? Can a person be both good and evil at the same time? Can a sidekick be a hero? How does love and friendship fit into all of this?

If I had to describe this book in one word, it would be “Quirky.” The characters have a lot of personality. Nimona is spunky and overenthusiastic about committing crimes. Lord Blackheart has a tragic backstory (of course) and a deadpan sense of humor. They make a brilliant team.

The humor in this story is pretty juvenile, but I’m an adult, and I laughed. If I had read this book as a kid, it would have become an instant favorite.

Admittedly, I’m pretty new to graphic novels (which is why this review is short), but I wasn’t a huge fan of the art style in this one. It didn’t always convey enough emotion for me. Some of it is great, but I often found myself glancing at the art and focusing on the dialogue only. I wish the characters had more detailed facial expressions.

I also wanted more from the end. I wasn’t ready for it to be over. What happens next? If there is ever a sequel, I will happily read it.

I’d highly recommend this book to reluctant child readers who need a quick, colorful story. This graphic novel is full of humor but also gives the reader something to think about.

Why is it so hard to review books I love? I’ve been thinking about this novel for days, and I still have no words. This might be my new favorite read of 2016. I don’t know what to say to make you read it.

“It's embarrassingly plain how inadequate language is.” – All the Light We Cannot See

This story is told from many points-of-view, but the two main characters are sixteen-year-old Marie-Laure and eighteen-year-old Werner. Marie-Laure is blind and in possession of a valuable jewel that her father took from a museum. In the middle of the siege of Saint-Malo, the jewel is being hunted by a crazy man. Meanwhile, Werner, a German soldier, is working on a radio in the basement of a French hotel—until a bomb hits the hotel and it collapses on top of him. He can hear Marie-Laure pleading for help over the airwaves, but can he escape from the rubble in time to save her?

I don’t even know where to start with this review. My copy of the book is jam-packed with pink sticky notes because I love the characters, and the writing style, and the nonlinear structure, and the way the chapters are divided. This book is a chunker (over 500 pages), but I read 300 pages in one day because I needed to know what happened next. Whenever I wasn’t reading the book, I was thinking about it. Every time I put it down, it somehow ended up in my hands again. It’s been a long time since a book has had that kind of grip on my imagination.

I want to rave about everything, but there are too many spoilers. I guess I can say that my favorite element of the story is the jewel. Mixing the legend of the jewel with a WWII battle is pure genius. According to the legend, whoever holds the jewel cannot die. The crazy man who is hunting Marie-Laure is desperate to save his own life. A blind girl and a cancer-riddled man are willing to stay in a warzone because of this stone. It shows the lengths people will go to in order to save themselves (and others). Deep down, the characters know that magic and legends aren’t real, but there’s always a tiny chance that they could be real, right?

I love the imagery. It’s kind of ironic that a book about a blind girl is so rich in visual imagery. Everything in this story is vivid. It’s easy to picture the characters and events. Certain scenes (such as the ones with the ocean critters in the kennel) will stick in my mind for a long time.

Another love: the lack of stereotypes. Marie-Laure is blind, but she’s far from “disabled.” She has hobbies, desires, and her own way of experiencing the world. She can find the light in every situation, even though she can’t see it. Werner is a Nazi, but he isn’t evil. He’s a soldier. When he hears a young French girl asking for help on the radio, he’ll willingly risk his life to find her.

“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.” – All the Light We Cannot See

 

“You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are.” – All the Light We Cannot See

Okay. I have to come up with something to criticize, or I’m going to start fangirling, and I’m way too dignified for that kind of nonsense.

The first 200 pages of the book are much slower than the last 300. Luckily, the writing is gorgeous, so that pulled me through. If you’re looking for a love story, you won’t find one here. If you don’t like books with dense descriptions or complex narrative structures, you might want to skip this one. I love those things, though. This is a total “Me” novel. It has literally everything I want in a story.

And, I’m heading toward fangirling again. See what this book has reduced me to?

I’m going to stop now.

Just go read it. It won a Pulitzer for a reason . . .

I have book review déjà vu. I feel like I just read (and kind of hated) this book about a week ago. There was a point in Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock (the bottom of page 69, actually) where I threw the book down and thought, Not this AGAIN! NO NO NO NO! I just don’t understand the appeal of this “deep, dark secret” mental illness plot.

I was interested in this book because it was described to me as part dystopia, part high school contemporary. That sounds pretty cool, right? What’s more dystopian than a modern-day high school?

On Leonard’s eighteenth birthday, he plans to kill his former best friend and then himself. We follow him through his school day as he says goodbye to his few friends and works up the courage to carry out his plan. Sprinkled throughout the book are letters that Leonard writes to himself from his ideal future. In his imagination, the future is a post-apocalyptic world that is mostly covered by water. He lives in a lighthouse with his wife and daughter and is very happy.

The letters are my favorite part of the book. The explanation for them comes far too late, so they’re a little jarring to read, but they’re unique. They show a lot about Leonard’s character. Not many people would say that their ideal future is a world where pretty much everybody is dead. The upbeat tone of the letters also provides relief from Leonard’s self-obsessed attitude.

“I feel like I’m broken—like I don’t fit together anymore. Like there’s no more room for me in the world or something. Like I’ve overstayed my welcome here on Earth, and everyone’s trying to give me hints about that constantly. Like I should just check out.” – Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

 

“we can simultaneously be human and monster—that both of those possibilities are in all of us.” – Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

Leonard is hiding a secret from the reader. His former best friend, Asher, did something awful to him. I’ve seen this same plot in a lot of other “mental illness” books, and I’m not a fan. I’m just going to copy my review for one of the other books, change the character names, and paste it here. You know that a plotline is overdone when the same review works for multiple books.

[Start copy/paste.]

On one hand, I know that this is an extremely important book. Young adult stories about trauma and illness are necessary because (unfortunately) many young readers have had trauma and/or mental illness in their lives. Everyone deserves to see themselves in a book.

On the other hand, I found this novel to be really, really predictable. Leonard has a deep, dark, traumatic secret that he’s hiding from everybody. It’s the exact same deep, dark, traumatic secret that a ton of other YA protagonists are hiding. I feel like I’ve read this book before. Many, many times. I could see his secret coming from a thousand miles away. Since I figured out his secret relatively early, I had to sit through 100+ pages of tedious angst while I waited for him to tell me what I already knew. If I hadn’t been reading this book for a class, I wouldn’t have finished it. Predictable books frustrate me.

[End copy/paste.]

I struggled to connect with every character in this book. A lot of them feel like stereotypes. There’s the depressed teen, the quirky old man, the absentee parents, the hero teacher. Leonard’s plan to kill Asher and commit suicide never seems all that threatening, and my brain was always several steps ahead of the plot. Maybe I need to give up on “mental illness” books because this one didn’t do much that I haven’t seen before.

I know this review sounds pretty negative. This isn’t a horrible book. I can see why it has so many positive reviews. It’s well-written and very quick to read. Up until page 69, when I figured out what Asher did to Leonard, I was intrigued by the story. It has an excellent message for teens who are struggling through high school. But, overall, this novel just isn’t unique enough for me.

“‘I can tell you get it—you're different. And I know how hard being different can be. But I also know how powerful a weapon being different can be. How the world needs such weapons. Gandhi was different. All great people are. And unique people such as you and me need to seek out other unique people who understand—so we don't get too lonely and end up where you did tonight.’” – Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

Like most experimental stories, it took me a few days to decide if this one is terrible or brilliant. With experimental writing, there is always a fine line between “OMG this is awesome!” and “WTF is this?” Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is part autobiography, part essay, and part fairytale. These different elements don’t always play well together, but ultimately, I decided that the book is brilliant.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is based on the author’s life. The narrator, Jeanette, is adopted by an ultra-religious family and brought up to be a missionary. Her missionary plans are on-track until she falls in love with a girl. After a string of failed “cures” for her homosexuality, Jeanette leaves home at sixteen and strikes out on her own.

Jeanette Winterson hilariously explores the inconsistencies of the ultra-religious. Her mother wants to help people—which is a noble goal—but she doesn’t take the time to understand the people who she’s trying to help. For example, Jeanette’s mother starts the town’s first mission for “colored” people. When she cooks for the new converts, she dumps canned pineapple all over the food because she has the strange notion that pineapple is the only fruit that colored people eat. She has good intentions, but she severely lacks the ability to see the world from other people’s perspectives.

This misunderstanding extends to her daughter’s “unnatural passions.” When Jeanette fumbles her way into confessing that she isn’t attracted to men, her mother doesn’t try to understand her young daughter’s confusion. She just calls in an exorcist.

“As far as I was concerned men were something you had around the place, not particularly interesting, but quite harmless. I had never shown the slightest feeling for them, and apart from my never wearing a skirt, saw nothing else in common between us.” – Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit 

 

“ . . . to change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil.” – Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

My favorite parts of the book are the scenes of Jeanette as a child in school. She is an outsider. As a child, she has a fascination with Hell, and she can’t understand why her teachers and fellow students don’t share her obsession. My favorite scene in the book is when Jeanette makes a needlework sampler with a Bible quote and an image of people burning in Hell. She demands that the teacher enter her work in a competition, even though the teacher doesn’t think it’s a good idea. I’m not religious, but I could totally relate to Jeanette in those scenes. I had a serious obsession with animals as a child. My first grade teacher even told me to stop talking about animals in class and to stop writing about them in my journal. Child-me was very confused about why it was wrong to find animals interesting.

“My needlework teacher suffered from a problem of vision. She recognised things according to expectation and environment. If you were in a particular place, you expected to see particular things. Sheep and hills, sea and fish; if there was an elephant in the supermarket, she'd either not see it at all, or call it Mrs. Jones and talk about fishcakes. But most likely, she'd do what most people do when confronted with something they don't understand. Panic.”  - Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit    

The overall tone of the book is pretty comical, but it’s still devastating when Jeanette loses her church family. Her religion keeps her from fitting in at school, and her homosexuality keeps her from fitting in at church. There aren’t many places in her world where she can be herself. This makes some of the secondary characters even more important. There are a few people in her life who take the time to understand her and offer help. She’s never completely alone, which is great.

Let’s talk about what didn’t work for me. I think I would have liked this book more if I was religious and British. Since I’m neither of those things, a lot of the references went over my head.

I also really dislike the fairytale parts of the story. I (kind of) understand why they’re in there. Jeanette is a very imaginative child, and the fairytales make the reader question the reliability of her narration. The fairytale characters’ quests also mirror Jeanette’s quest to accept herself. I understand the fairytales, but I didn’t care about them. Whenever the princes and princesses came up, I just groaned and waited impatiently to get back to the main storyline.

Other than the fairytales, I really like this book. If you’re interested in stories that are rich in symbolism, you need to read this one. I’d love to discuss the symbols, but this review is getting long, and I can sense your eyes glazing over with boredom. I’ll just say that I especially like how the author uses fruit to show conformity/rebellion/individuality/otherness. It’s clever and unexpected.

I can totally see why this quirky book is considered a modern classic. I’m glad I read it and will check out some of Jeanette Winterson’s other books.

So . . . I didn’t like this one.

Chuck Palahniuk is a hit-or-miss author for me. Some of his books are amazing. They’re funny, and clever, and slightly offensive, and the social satire is on-point. Beautiful You is mostly just silly. I knew that this book didn’t have the greatest reviews before I read it, but since it was satirizing Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey, I couldn’t resist. I expected to love it.

Penny is an ambitious but average employee at a big law firm. One morning, she trips and lands in a puddle of coffee at the feet of Maxwell, the world’s richest man. After the coffee turns her blouse see-through, he promptly invites her to dinner.

“She kept hoping that something would happen to rescue her from her own small-scale, predictable dreams.” – Beautiful You

Penny becomes Maxwell’s lover, which is great, until she discovers that she’s nothing but a lab rat that he uses to test his company’s new line of sex toys. Maxwell plans to use these toys to achieve world domination. After a woman uses one, Maxwell can control her brain for the rest of her life. He can tell her which politicians to vote for, which ugly shoes to buy, and which crappy vampire romance novels to obsess over. Penny has to stop Maxwell before he destroys the world.

From the book description, it sounded like this odd little dystopia would be hilarious, but I mostly wavered between disgust and boredom while reading. Like the erotica that this book is satirizing, Beautiful You is heavy on the unrealistic sex and light on everything else. I haven’t read much erotica because the sex lives of characters don’t interest me, and that’s why I got bored with this book. It’s mostly just sex. I wanted so much more from the characters. The plot also didn’t work for me. The novel completely lost me when Penny climbs Mount Everest to learn the sex secrets of the ancients from the sex witch. The trip feels long and pointless, and I seriously started to question why I was reading this story. If I hadn’t been so close to the end, I wouldn’t have finished it.

I did laugh once. It was when the men try to burn the dildos in a bonfire to get their wives back, but the dildos turn into missiles, shoot out of the fire, and destroy the city. Even though I didn’t like the book, I have to admit, that is funny.

“In her experience every man thought he was a natural dancer, and every one thought he was good in bed. The truth was that most men only knew one dance step—usually the pogo—and between the sheets they were like a monkey in a nature film poking at an anthill with a stick.” – Beautiful You

I think I struggled with this book because I’m not sure what I was supposed to get out of reading it. Maybe I was cringing so hard at the magical sex witch that I missed the point. Is the book about the dangers of constantly chasing pleasure instead of doing the un-pleasurable things that are necessary to achieve success? Is it a critique of the gender roles in our society? Honestly, I have no idea. I’ll leave you with some lines from the book that I really like. Maybe you can help me figure it out.

“Artificial over stimulation seemed like the perfect way to stifle a generation of young people who wanted more and more from a world where less and less was available.” – Beautiful You

 

“The future had a way of breaking your heart if you expected too much.” – Beautiful You

 

“She wanted a choice beyond: Housewife versus lawyer. Madonna versus whore. An option not mired in the lingering detritus of some Victorian-era dream.” – Beautiful You

I have serious mixed feelings, guys.

Charm & Strange is a little charming and a lot strange. The story takes place on two different timelines. In the present-day timeline, Andrew “Win” Winters wanders into the woods near his remote boarding school. It’s obvious that he has a severe mental illness: He believes that he is turning into a wolf. In the past timeline, Andrew spends the summer at a lake with his family. Something terrifying happens that changes his life forever.

I was interested in reading this book because of the werewolf aspect. I wondered how the author would handle it without it coming across as silly or disrespectful to people with mental illnesses. Now that I’ve read the book, I can say that the author handles the werewolf stuff brilliantly. The book is well-written, and Win’s wolf fixation makes perfect sense in his confused mind. The author does a nice job of showing why Win believes something so irrational. I like that Win has friends who try very hard to understand him. They protect him when he’s too lost inside his own head to protect himself.

“This school devours privacy, and rumors are like drops of blood in an ocean full of predators.” – Charm & Strange

Here’s where the mixed feelings come in:

On one hand, I know that this is an extremely important book. It’s a realistic, non-glamorous look at mental illness. Young adult stories about trauma and illness are necessary because (unfortunately) many young readers have had trauma and/or mental illness in their lives. Everyone deserves to see themselves in a book.

“She must have seen more of my charm than my strangeness tonight.” – Charm & Strange

On the other hand, I found this novel to be really, really predictable. Win has a deep, dark, traumatic secret that he’s hiding from everybody. It’s the exact same deep, dark, traumatic secret that a ton of other YA protagonists are hiding. I feel like I’ve read this book before. I could see his secret coming from a thousand miles away. Since I figured out his secret relatively early, I had to sit through 100+ pages of angst while I waited for him to tell me what I already knew. If I hadn’t been reading this book for a class, I wouldn’t have finished it. Predictable books frustrate me.

My favorite part of the novel is actually the beginning because it’s not clear what’s going on. It’s difficult to tell what’s actually happening and what Win just thinks is happening. Once I did figure out what was actually happening, I completely lost interest in the story.

Charm & Strange is an important, beautifully written novel, but it’s too similar to dozens of other books I’ve read.  

This book taught me so much about jellyfish. Those things are creepy. And, they’re taking over the world. Or, the oceans at least. This makes me glad that I don’t live by the ocean. Colorado has an excellent jellyfish buffer around it, so I don’t have to worry about getting stung to death by something I can barely see.

The Thing about Jellyfish is part science-story, part grief-story. Twelve-year-old Suzy is a natural-born scientist. When her friend, Franny, drowns at the beach one summer, Suzy refuses to believe that Franny’s death was something that “just happened.” She suspects that Franny was stung by a rare and deadly jellyfish, and she’s willing to travel to Australia on her own to prove her theory correct.

This is one of those middlegrade books that I wish had been around when I was a preteen. It beautifully mixes the stages of grief with science facts (two things that go together strangely well), and also tackles the difficult transition from elementary school to middle school. Suzy’s obsession with science has always made her an outcast. Her outcast status becomes even worse when she enters middle school, and her friends all start caring about popularity. No one wants to hang out with a nerd like Suzy. Suzy does not react well to this. She makes some regrettable decisions in an attempt to change her place in the school hierarchy.

“Sometimes you want things to change so badly, you can’t even stand to be in the same room with the way things actually are.” - The Thing about Jellyfish

Suzy is the driving force behind this story. She’s easy to root for because she’s struggling to be herself in a middle school world that doesn’t understand her. She’s also desperately clinging to her jellyfish theory because she doesn’t want her friend’s death to be something that “just happened.” Suzy’s life is depressing, but it never feels completely hopeless. Her journal entries are funny, and she has an amazingly supportive family.

This book is elegant. There is a lot going on in Suzy’s world, which could make the story feel muddled, but it never does. Everything flows together smoothly. It’s impressive. I can understand why this novel has gotten attention from award committees. The book is also ridiculously well-written. This is one of those novels where you can imagine every sentence being typed up in fancy font and plastered all over some hormonal teenager’s Tumblr page.

“A person doesn’t always know the difference between a new beginning and a forever sort of ending.” - The Thing about Jellyfish

 

“Maybe this is what happens when a person grows up. Maybe the space between you and the other people in your life grows so big you can stuff it full of all kinds of lies.” - The Thing about Jellyfish

Occasionally, I felt like the story got a little slow and heavy-handed. I know that this is a middlegrade book, and the author has to be obvious about certain things to get the point across to young readers, but sometimes I felt like the morals were a little too obvious. There were several times where I stopped reading and thought, Okay, everybody gets the point. Move on.

Overall, this is a well-crafted children’s book. It made my animal-loving (and animal-fearing) heart very happy.

I think this is a case of “It’s not you, it’s me.”

When I was a kid/young teen, I went through a multi-year obsession with survival stories. I pretty much only read nonfiction about people (usually historical people) who survived crazy wilderness situations. The California and Yukon gold rushes were probably my second-biggest wilderness passion. Arctic exploration was definitely my deadly-story first love, but I read a lot of gold rush nonfiction. If a book promised that someone was going to die horrifically in the wild, young me was all over it.

So, what does this have to do with Walk on Earth a Stranger? Well, this novel is set in gold-rush-era America and focuses on a teen girl named Leah. She has a secret: She can sense gold. She uses her power to make her family rich. This attracts the attention of some unsavory people. After Leah is forced to flee from her home, she decides to head west with her kind-of-sort-of boyfriend. Gold has recently been discovered in California, and she knows that she’ll be able to find enough of it to make a new life for herself. Her biggest challenge will be surviving the trip from Georgia to California.

“‘Only way to reach the green grass of Oregon or the sweet gold of California is through hell itself.’” –Walk on Earth a Stranger.

I didn’t like this book as much as I expected I would. I know that I burned myself out on gold rush stories when I was younger, but I thought that Leah’s gold-sensing magic would add a new twist to a familiar tale. Unfortunately, the magic is barely present in this book. Hundreds of pages go by without it even being mentioned. The book is marketed as fantasy, but it feels a lot more like historical fiction, which would usually be fine with me because I love historical books. My issue is that this book doesn’t bring anything new to the historical fiction genre. I found Leah’s journey to California to be painfully slow and highly predictable. I felt like I spent the entire book waiting for something big to happen, and nothing ever did.

I also wasn’t feeling Leah’s love interest. Jefferson seems to spend most of his time sulking. I understand why he’s unhappy—he’s often near-death and has to deal with racist idiots on top of it—but I started to wonder what Leah sees in him. He doesn’t have a lot going on in the personality department.

There are some elements of the book that I love. Leah is a badass woman. I really like her. She’s loyal and quick-thinking, and nothing is going to stop her from getting to California. She’s confident in her body but not unrealistically beautiful, which is rare for a YA heroine.

“I have a strange life; I know it well. We have a big homestead and not enough working hands, so I’m the girl who hunts and farms and pans for gold because her daddy never had sons. I’m forever weary, my hands roughed and cracked, my skirts worn too thin too soon. The town girls poke fun at me, calling me ‘Plain Lee’ on account of my strong hands and my strong jaw.” – Walk on Earth a Stranger

The book discusses a lot of interesting gender issues. For part of the story, Leah is forced to dress as a boy, “Lee,” because she needs money. The author does an impressive job of showing the differences in the ways that Lee and Leah are treated. Even though they are the same person, Lee gets all of the advantages that society has to offer. Leah is treated like property.

“‘Men can be relentless,’ she agrees, ‘when they think a woman belongs to them.’” - Walk on Earth a Stranger

This book does have some positive aspects, and I was entertained by parts of it, but I probably won’t continue with the series. It just didn’t offer much that I haven’t seen before.  

I cheated. I was a horrible bookworm and saw the movie years before reading the book. In my defense, it wasn’t totally my fault. I took this awful film class in college, and the only good memory I have from it is watching the 1975 Stepford Wives movie. I absolutely loved the movie and can’t believe that it has taken me this long to read the novella. Maybe I was so traumatized by the arrogant professor that I developed a subconscious aversion to all things related to 1970s filmmaking. Or maybe I’m just crazy. I don’t know.

Anyway, I think most people are familiar with the basic plot of The Stepford Wives. Joanna, her husband, and their children are the new family in Stepford. Joanna’s husband quickly makes friends with their male neighbors, but Joanna just can’t connect with the women, no matter how hard she tries. All they care about is housework and their husbands. Joanna starts to suspect that something is wrong in Stepford. The women have no personalities, and the men are secretive about what happens at their “men only” meetings. She starts researching the town’s history and discovers something that puts her life in danger.

“That’s what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. That’s what they all were, all the Stepford wives: actresses in commercials, pleased with detergents and floor wax, with cleansers, shampoos, and deodorants. Pretty actresses, big in the bosom but small in the talent, playing housewives unconvincingly, too nicey-nice to be real.” – The Stepford Wives

The Stepford Wives is more than just a horror story. It’s also a creative social satire and a warning to be careful what you wish for. A lot of people have already discussed what this book has to say about women. You can’t have a thorough discussion of feminist literature without bringing up The Stepford Wives, but this story isn’t just about women. It also satirizes Western society’s male stereotypes.

The men in this book are selfish and sex-obsessed. They want beautiful, submissive wives who only care about cooking, cleaning, raising children, and pleasing their husbands. This fits with Western society’s stereotypes of men, but if you think about it, it’s ridiculous. Do men really want their daughters growing up to be mindless sex slaves? Do they really not care at all about their wives personalities? Would they really trade the woman they fell in love with for something sexy but brainless? Maybe some would, but most wouldn’t. A lot of readers focus on the women in this story, but the novella also shows that our society has some pretty messed-up ideas about men.  

I read The Stepford Wives shortly after reading Ira Levin’s other horror book, Rosemary’s Baby, which is interesting because it’s easy to tell that both books are written by the same person. If you like one book, you’ll probably like the other. They both star women who are manipulated by the men around them. Both women get caught up in bizarrely dangerous situations that they don’t fully understand. The reader is led to question both women’s sanity. The books seem to follow the same outline, but I like The Stepford Wives better. Joanna is much less naïve than Rosemary. Her personality never got on my nerves like Rosemary’s did. Joanna knows herself and is confident about her place in the world.

Both books also have the same flaws. Like Rosemary’s Baby, the tension in The Stepford Wives builds so slowly that I had a hard time staying interested in it at first. The author includes a lot of mundane details that add realism but aren’t very exciting to read. Luckily, I knew the ending, and it’s a very short book, so that kept me going. Also, I was trapped in an airport when I read it. That helped, too.

The book must have done something right because it’s become an icon in Western culture. I think it speaks to people’s fears of being transformed into something they’re not. What makes it scarier is that there really are/were ‘Stepford Wives’ in the world.

If you’re interested in feminist literature or classic horror, then I’d recommend adding The Stepford Wives to your reading list. You should also watch the 1975 movie. I know that the movie is good because even an evil professor with a serious stick up her bum couldn’t ruin it for me.  

Teenager Gerald Faust has always been angry. The biggest source of his rage is his older sister, who gets all of the attention from his parents and whose psychopathic ways are overlooked by them. As a young child, Gerald took out his frustration by “crapping.” Basically, he defecated everywhere: on the kitchen table, in his mother’s shoes, on beds, anyplace that would get him attention. Gerald and his siblings’ behavior was so bad that his parents called in a reality TV show nanny. Gerald “The Crapper” became an overnight celebrity, and twelve years later, he’s still dealing with the fallout.

“Dating isn't good for Gerald Faust because everyone knows his secrets.
And everyone has psychoanalyzed him.
And everyone knows what his problem is.
And everyone knows he has baggage.
And everyone thinks they know how to help him.
Because everyone believes what they see on TV.
Because no one has realized yet that it's all full of shit.” - Reality Boy

Reality Boy is a uniquely modern book. In the history of the media, reality TV is a recent development. Many families have put themselves on television without knowing the long-term effects that it would have on their children. Even after the show is over, those children’s mistakes will live on forever through the magic of the Internet. Reality Boy is a fascinating book because it examines problems that we are just beginning to understand.

For all of those people who’ve been telling me to read an A.S. King novel, you were right, I liked her writing style. The writing in this book is an entertaining blend of humor, weirdness, and realism. The teenagers actually speak like teenagers. The story is full of swear words and insecure people who rarely say everything they want to say.

My favorite parts of this book are the flashbacks to the time that Gerald’s family spent making the TV program. Those scenes are hilarious and devastating. I love that the author shows the “reality” of reality TV. Gerald’s family calls the nanny program because they desperately need help, but the TV crew manipulates and uses them. They only care about creating entertaining television.

“Maybe most other people are messed up, too. It just wasn't aired on TV.” – Reality Boy

I actually think I would have liked this book more if I had read it when I was a teenager. As an adult, I had a hard time connecting to Gerald and his “My life is the worst thing ever” attitude. He does have a sucky home life, but he brings a lot of misery on himself by obsessing over it. I think I would have liked this book more if I was a teenager because I thought I had a horrible life when I was Gerald’s age. His angst probably wouldn’t have bothered teenage-me at all.

I also wasn’t a huge fan of the romance. After I finished the book, the only thing I remembered about Hannah (I had to look up her name just now) is that she likes fish. The romance doesn’t offer anything that I haven’t seen in a hundred other YA books.

Reality Boy is an examination of modern culture. It’s about dysfunctional families, narcissism, untreated mental illness, and the media’s manipulation of information. It’s also about forgiveness and learning to take control of your life. It definitely won’t be my last A.S. King book.   

This is a review of the English translation of a French novel.

Sometimes, it can be good when school forces me to read a book. College and grad school have helped me discover many amazing stories that I never would have picked up on my own. Other times, (okay, most times) forced school reads are awful slogs that I wish I’d never laid eyes on. For me, The Lover is closer to the second category than the first. I didn’t hate it, but it’s not my kind of book.

The Lover is a semi-autobiographical novel set in French Indochina. The narrator, a young French girl who is based on the author, has a terrible home life. Her father is dead, her mother struggles with a serious mental illness, and her older brother is a tyrant with a gambling addiction. One day, the teenage narrator meets a wealthy Chinese businessman. They are both intrigued by each other and quickly begin a sexual relationship. Their sexual encounters are illegal (because of her age) and socially unacceptable (because they are different races and classes). The affair grows into something that will haunt both of them for the rest of their lives.

“Suddenly, all at once, she knows, knows that he doesn't understand her, that he never will, that he lacks the power to understand such perverseness. And that he can never move fast enough to catch her.” - The Lover

I’m a book structure junkie. I love books with intricate structures that make me work to figure them out. This novel definitely has a challenging structure. I had to read the whole book twice before I felt like I fully understood it. The narrator is an old woman who is looking back at her childhood, so the timeline jumps unexpectedly between the past and present. There are a lot of plot tangents and random details. Most of the characters are unnamed, events are alluded to but not explained, and the narrator often talks about herself in third person. I read the book once to sort out the structure and once to understand the story. If you want to read this one, be prepared to work a little.

I actually really like the structure. It makes the novel feel like a diary, or like the reader is delving in and out of an old woman’s fragmented memories. The writing style is too ornate and repetitive for my tastes, but there is some beautiful description. I especially like how the narrator talks about herself:

“It has been my face. It's got older still, of course, but less, comparatively, than it would otherwise have done. It's scored with deep, dry wrinkles, the skin is cracked. But my face hasn't collapsed, as some with fine features have done. It's kept the same contours, but its substance has been laid waste. I have a face laid waste.” - The Lover

 

“I know it's not clothes that make women beautiful or otherwise, nor beauty care, nor expensive creams, nor the distinction of costliness of their finery. I know the problem lies elsewhere. I don't know where. I only know it isn't where women think.” - The Lover

My biggest issue with this book is that the story didn’t hold my attention. This novel is tiny (about 130 pages), and there is a lot going on. There’s political unrest in Indochina, the narrator has severe family issues, she’s  involved in a forbidden affair, she’s discovering her sexuality, and she may (possibly?) have a crush on a female classmate. That’s a lot to cram into 130 pages. The author didn’t get deep enough into any of these issues to hook me. I never grew to care about the narrator or her problems. Everything seems very detached and surface-level, which is probably what the author intended, but it led to me getting bored. Quickly.

I can appreciate this book, and I think I know what other people love about it, but it didn’t quite work for me.