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staying with my father and my teenage brother occasionally has been very enlightening actually i need to think about it positively

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Clap When You Land, Elizabeth Acevedo

I loved this book. It was one of the best I've read in a while. I immediately texted friends to tell them to read it.

The writing is beautiful. I was invested in the lives of both girls and anticipated their convergence. It was overall just an incredible story. The difficulty of their unique grief was approached so well. The plot could've been far-fetched but was perfectly executed. I cared about and understood the characters and their fears and loves and motivations. I listened to the audiobook and it was just a pleasure, enthralling, well paced, and I didn't want anyone to interrupt me. I'm very interested in the author's other books; even though the plot summaries personally appeal to me less than this one, I just want to read more by her. When I read it, I had just reread the Hunger Games and then read a couple other books trying to catch a semblance of the feeling. This one finally brought some of that by giving good characters that worked with difficult situations.

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The Sun Is Also a Star, Nicola Yoon

I think this is the first strictly romance book I've read. It did not impress me! This review contains spoilers.

I wanted to try the genre, and I was very interested in the synopsis. A first generation Korean American boy and a Jamaican American girl have just one day to spend together before she is potentially deported. Their stories are interesting in their own right; I realize this is a romance, but to me a romance is compelling because of who the characters are and how they interact. I felt that their separate issues were often glossed over.

Something that was pointed out to me in the context of the Hunger Games -- specifically Katniss's relationship with Madge in the books and the complete erasure of it in the movies -- is how seldom female protagonists get good female friends. Where the hell is Natasha's best friend? In the beginning she's distant and seems to not put her best friend's deportation on her list of priorities, but by the end she just isn't mentioned. This would be more understandable if it was to make a point about Natasha being lonely (though she doesn't react much to the mistreatment), people who aren't immigrants not caring enough about the struggles of immigrants, or maybe a contrast between her bestfriend's lack of concern and Daniel's concern.

But Daniel isn't concerned except in how it affects him. At least not until later in the book. I found that disrespectful, and how can I care about them together if I don't like him?

One day to experience the start of something surprisingly good, and new, and exciting, could make for a good plot. What actually happens is insta-love that is completely unbelievable. Daniel is a romantic! Natasha is a scientist! From this we derive their entire personalities. The progression is hard to believe. Love at first sight isn't real! He doesn't even know her well enough to know she's facing deportation. The result is characters and romance that seem completely dumbed down.

If the book had ended when they went their separate ways and tried to keep in touch but eventually fell apart, that would've been better. It would've been a message about how love isn't built in a day despite how they felt.

Or if it had included no insta-love elements but ended the same, with a chance reuinion when they were older, that would've been better. It would be a chance to see if what they started could become love. It would be sweet.

This was the opposite of The Downstairs Girl, in the sense that I loved the plot of The Downstairs Girl but disliked how it was written, and I did not care about the events in this book but loved the writing style. I loved the different perspectives, the background information on physics and the cultural significance of hair, the look into the lives of minor characters whose personal circumstances shaped the protagonists' lives, and how theirs were altered by the protagonists. That was really good, especially in a book about fate. The writing style just wasn't enough to redeem the book.

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The Downstairs Girl, Stacey Lee

I really wanted to like this one. I just didn't very much. The protagonist is a Chinese American woman living in the South in the early 20th century. I was excited to read this, as when Asian Americans before recent times are portrayed it's often in the Western US; and the protagonist is dealing with interesting circumstances. I rooted for her and her story started off well, but by the end I was disappointed. I felt it was anticlimactic, and the primary plot of her authorship felt unconvincing and overshadowed. I didn't feel a real sense of the danger, and I didn't feel the resolution with much relief. Her romance lost a lot of its charm, the horse race felt rushed and the result predictable. It's possible I would've enjoyed this book more in middle school -- it could just be targeted to a younger audience. The only reason I doubt this is the sexual harassment by the man who reveals himself to her. The description of his "morel mushroom and two mossy acorns" was painful to read.

Verdict: excellent concept, poor execution, I wasn't crazy about the writing style. I read from another review that her other books are better, and I think she typically writes historical fiction about Chinese American women, so I want to try her other books.

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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Note: this is the prequel to the Hunger Games series. If you're invested you may not want to read this review before reading the book!

In his last scene before returning to the Capitol, Coriolanus dives into the remote lake. His mother's palette and his photographs are destroyed by the water, but he is surprised to find that his father's compass still works. He trashes the ruined items, meanwhile rejecting the legacy of gentleness his mother's token represented and the relationships represented in the photos. With only his father's inherited (literal and figurative) compass left to guide him, he returns to the Capitol and embraces his father's coldness.

I was really excited for this. I trust Suzanne Collins and I wasn't disappointed! Often a prequel can't compete with the originals, but it didn't feel like she was retconning important details; she added interesting background, and in some ways the sequel seemed planned. Tigris especially was given a background. I had already reread the trilogy earlier this year but had to read them again after this.

Snow is a great unreliable narrator. At first I was disappointed that the contestants in the 10th Hunger Games were not fleshed out. They seemed almost animalistic, dehumanized. But that's because this is Snow's perspective. We know what kind of person he is destined to become; he has to someday be the President Snow we see in the trilogy. Looking back to the trilogy, we can draw comparisons between the protagonists. Katniss empathizes with the other tributes; even when she attempts to dehumanize them so that she call kill them, she describes their traits and backgrounds and feels guilt. The reader of Ballad doesn't know who the the 10th Hunger Games tributes are beyond their violent acts because Snow doesn't care; Katniss identifies with the other 74th and 75th Hunger Games tributes and knows they are not her true enemy. Katniss and Corio both grew up poor and hungry, but Corio is unable to identify with others or see his problems as structural because he views himself as separate from and better than people outside his sociopolitical bubble. His skill as a manipulator is shown immediately, but at times he edges toward the sympathetic. However, the more he interacts with Lucy Gray, the more we see that he dehumanizes her as well. I feared at some points that this book might follow a pattern of blaming a woman who breaks the man's heart for his loss of character. However, it soon became clear that his way of speaking about Lucy Gray was written very intentionally. The first time he refers to her as "his", it's plausible he's speaking only in the terms of the Capitol. Later, he speaks of her being unequivocally his, and of owning her. He does not really like anything about her. I felt dread as the book progressed.

Snow maintains his worthiness above people born into "lesser" families, most especially those of the districts. He can only convince himself of Lucy Gray's worth by believing she is not truly "of the districts". This of course is a farce, as no one is intrinsically district or Capitol, and this belief in her worth deteriorates over time. He essentializes Capitol vs district and Panem citizenship; the Covey is not "really" district 12 because they previously were travellers. However, district is determined by the Capitol, which suppresses human movement and cultural expression. Everyone's ancestors were something before they were Capitol / district. To Snow, "District 12" and "Capitol" are both intrinsic states which indicate different levels of worthiness, rather than incidental circumstance of birth.

At no point does Snow come to respect the Plinths. At no point does he truly care about others. When he realizes what Tigress, only two years his elder, may have sacrificed for him --endured a trauma for him -- he decides he doesn't want to know about it. She can bear to experience it, but he can't even bear to take some of the burden by listening. The presumed murder of Lucy Gray is presented as nothing more than an inevitable tragedy at the hands of a man who could not be satisfied without conplete power and control.

Snow's characterization brings home the political message at the core of the series. A large portion of the book is his internal experience, through which we see a man not unlike powerful men in modern America. His struggle and life experience do not inevitably make him evil; his active decisions and mentality do.

Overall, I enjoyed it. I hope Collins writes more (in other series!). It didn't fully have the pull of the original trilogy but kept me engaged and interested, and appropriately haunted. I read it a few weeks ago and am still thinking about it.

Some miscellaneous thoughts:

• At two separate times, I thought Coriolanus would be left in the arena to teach him and the people a lesson that even the Capitol has to comply. First, I thought the bombs were set by the Capitol and meant to start the Hunger Games with all the contestants and mentors present. Then I thought he and Sejanus would be left to battle it out after sneaking in. I was interested in the development but must've been misreading where the plot was led. Just a sidenote.

• Built into the original trilogy is commentary on sex, class, and race; an analysis of racism is missing from this book. I wanted a deeper analysis of colonization when the Covey was discussed and I was surprised to see racial dynamics that are absolutely an issue in-universe ignored while in the perspective of a man who will once day be responsible for the structural propogation if it; it was so severe by the 74th Hunger Games that the omission seems glaring.

• At what point did Collins decide she would write this, and did she have Snow's background already in mind at the time she wrote the first books?

• What inspired the Covey? Given that racist legacies are written into the original trilogy and the canon is a commentary and representation of issues Collins is concerned about, I wonder about it and its implications but don't know enough. District 12 is settled on mines but the Covey is said to be travelers, considered outsiders. Collins *did* show the suppression of the Covey and the attempt to homogenize the culture, and the absurdity of District citizenship being seen as intrinsic. I just wanted more, I don't know how much of a real criticism this is, I just wanted more.

• If I recall right, neither district 12 Hunger Games victors are discussed by Katniss's time; both histories have been erased. It fits in so well with the originals.

• What specifically is said about the songs sung by the Covey, especially The Hanging Tree? How does context change the song's interpretation?

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I’m cooking rice and beans cooking dal cooking lamb reheating pizza lighting the candles on the birthday cake standing quietly by the window still hungry for I don’t know what.

Often I’m lonely. Sometimes a joy pours through me so immense.

— Marie Howe, from “Magdalene Afterwards,” in Magdalene: Poems

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Holes, Louis Sachar

A book about prophesy, curses, fate, racism, greed, and friendship. I read Holes for the first time in 7th grade Literature alongside Freak the Mighty, Number the Stars, Tuck Everlasting, The Witch Of Blackbird Pond, and Johnny Tremain. Holes was already one of my favorite movies, it had such a persistently hopeful and sweet feeling yet was one of the first movies I saw that addressed anything as real as racism and poverty and bullying. The song was sweet and I was invested in the boys at Camp Green Lake.

Tuck Everlasting had been another favorite movie of mine. When we read that book, I enjoyed it but found it was a rare exception where I liked the movie better.

Not Holes, though.

I told a friend from class a few weeks ago that the book was still one of the most perfectly woven stories I've ever experienced. He'd never read it, so I found him a copy and gave it to him last week, and had to reread it for myself.

Spoilers below.

[[MORE]]

"If only, if only," the woodpecker sighs,

"The bark on the tree was as soft as the skies."

While the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely,

Crying to the moo-oo--oon,

"If only, if only."

When Elya moved to America and first translated the song from Latvian to English, it no longer rhymed. His wife Sarah changed some of the words to sing it to their baby. This is the version Stanley sings as he carries Hector up the mountain.

Nothing in Holes is an accident. Not the fact that Stanley was sent to Camp Green Lake, or that Hector was too. Not Stanley Yelnats the first being robbed or Stanley Yelnats the third's struggle to succeed in his inventions. But not the fact that Hector must learn to read either -- he has to be the one to reveal that the case has Stanley's name on it. Not the onions, or the peaches.

Elya leaves Madame Zeroni behind, neglects to honor his word and carry her up the mountain after she has helped him. His family is cursed forever.

"I can fix that," is as recognizable to my generation as "As you wish," was to the last. Sam and Katherine fall in love, and the white man who owns half the town and has eyes on Katherine responds violently. It's against the law for a black man to kiss a white woman, and with the sheriff's approval the punishment is death.

The lake dries up. Kissin' Kate only kisses the men she kills. When she dies, the town is cursed for the violent racism that killed Sam.

So much wrong was done in the desert where the lake used to be. It all has to be done right this time. Stanley sings as he carries Hector up the mountain, and they grow stronger together. The peaches and onions save their lives. The great-great-great grandson of Madame Zeroni and the great-great grandson of Elya Yelnats lift the family curse, and in doing so renew their luck and are able to find the treasure -- and in working together to do so, lift Kate's curse.

The rain falls again. Stanley and Hector are realeased from the Camp. Hector finds his mom, and Stanley's father has a breakthrough discovery.

Holes is perfectly paced. Everything is a slow reveal and everything comes together in the end. It's a book I want to keep coming back to all the time.

The song is completed on the last page. Ms. Zeroni sings her family's part to her son, and it's hard not to cry at the conclusion.

"If only, if only, the moon speaks no reply;

Reflecting the sun and all that's gone by.

Be strong my weary wolf, turn around boldly.

Fly high, my baby bird,

My angel, my only."

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Barbie Doll, Marge Piercy (1971)

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I got 60/1000 or 6% on this but I'm curious to see where I'm at at the end of the year. quite a few were books I'll be reading in 2020 so I'll have to revisit!

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having now read Sir Gawain i get why bbc merlin Subtexted him so hard

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The Great Forgetting, James Renner

This is my first wholly bad review! I thought this book was really, really bad. I really like conspiracy theories, sci fi that seems like it’s just set in present reality until you get farther into the book and realize it’s off, and I liked the idea of the “gradient” - introducing people to the theory slowly, waiting till they accept progressively one more-out-there idea to introduce the next. It went so so wrong……

Spoilers below, but I wouldn’t recommend reading it anyway.

• My first HUGE problem was the RIDICULOUSLY inappropriate relationships. Sam, who’s a COCSA /& CSA survivor, is 13 and her abuse is still ongoing when she first gets with the protagonist, Jack, 17 at the time. She’s removed from her abusive household and  then is still with Jack at 17/ 21. And then, when they find Jack’s best friend Tony about to kill himself, Jack…gives his gf and bff permission to fuck to cheer him up…? So their weird relationship of them both sleeping with her continues for a while. Tony says that Sam doesn’t like how delicately Jack treats her because she was abused- and there’s then a scene where Jack is thinking about how badly he wants to scream at her aggressively when he doesn’t like what she’s saying. He doesn’t though- he just tells her to shut up and pulls her to kiss him. For a while, I thought maybe the author was trying to write him as a flawed protagonist. By the end though it seemed clear the reader is supposed to like him and care if he lives or dies. Two other main relationships - between Jack’s sister and Mark (said to be abusive but not for this reason) and with Cole also had this age gap. Always with the woman as the younger one. Interesting, Renner! This being presented as acceptable was what condemned this book to me - it made it so, so hard to read.

• The only character I found likeable (Cole) also gets with a 13 year old girl as a 17 year old at the end (I had hoped he would be gay, too - he seemed slightly coded as such and is constantly called a fag and such by the Hilariously Homophobic Right-Wing Old Man) and then dies

• The men who control the world-brain-control devices are revealed to be Jewish holocaust survivors. So you get those conspiracy theories in there.

• I really wouldn’t necessarily mind using the names of real celebrities and scientists - that could add to its setting in the present. But saying these real people (Hawking was the main one) pioneered the mind control scheme is a bit sinister, I know I wouldn’t like my name used this way

• Boiling water doesn’t get rid of the flouride. This one is googleable.

• I’m guessing the writer took some notes from Gran Torino in building the Loveable Right-Wing Old Man. The jaded Vietnam war vet who uses anti Asian racial slurs but really is a good person and really doesn’t hate Asian peoples - rescues an early teens Vietnamese girl who’s being prostituted, hides her in his apartment for an extended time, until another man breaks in to rape and kill her - at which time Loveable Old Man kills this guy.

• Here’s a short example of the obnoxious writing style and subtle judgements the author interjects

“She was round but not unattractive. Dark hair. Dark skin. She was forty-five. A Navajo. Full-blood. One of the librarians from section twelve. Biographies.”

• “She sat and he offered her the pipe. It was marijuana, or like marijuana in the way a freshly picked berry from the forest is like store-bought fruit. This was uncultivated, wild pot. It smelled of damp earth and time. If history had a smell, thought Sam, it would smell just like this. She held in the smoke and then let it out slowly like he’d showed her to do when they were kids.”

I don’t know if the author is trying to prove to us that he HAS in FACT had sex and smoked weed, but what is this? Weed is in fact better when cultivated, is not native to the area of Alaska and can probably not be grown outside in that area, and is never going to smell like “damp earth and time” holy fuck this is corny. Also I love wild berries, but the best berries are fresh home-grown berries. Author should go to the farmer’s market.

• This one is nsfw but I have to include it. Keep in mind Jack (21) is dating Sam (17) & Tony (21) is his best buddy. Super creepy & consistently the type of relationship represented in the book, and while I expect sex scenes in novels I don't expect weird sharing kinks in sci fi thrillers.

“Jack hugged his friend.

‘Get off me before you give me an accidental boner,’ said Tony.

Jack backed away and Sam swam to Tony and hugged him. Then she laughed. "Not a moment too soon,” she said.

Sam looked at Jack. She was seventeen now. A young woman who’d kicked off her fears in the years since the county fair and that scorching August in her when they were kids. There was a question in her eyes, and they were so close in so many ways she didn’t need to voice it. Jack nodded, smiled, and drifted on his back toward the beach. Sam turned to Tony and slipped her legs around him. She leaned forward and brushed her chest against his.

'What are you doing?’ He whispered.

'Making you feel better,’ she said. She took his right hand and placed it on her left breast. Then she moved up his body and placed her mouth on his. His lips were softer than Jack’s. Almost feminine. He broke away to look for Jack, but he was stepping out of the water already, giving them privacy. 'It’s okay,’ Sam assured him.

In a moment Tony was tossing her clothes away. And then he was inside her, she was around him, and when he came, he bit her lip and she moaned softly.

They took Tony back to Jack’s dorm at Miami U and later that night the three of them climbed under the flannel blankets of the narrow bed. Tony kissed Sam as Jack spooned up to her from behind.“

rating: 👎👎👎👎👎

The first part of the book was intriguing! Even though the book let me unsatisfied, it did really pull me in for a while. Unfortunately I didn’t care at all about any but one of the characters - I was either very neutral or actively couldn’t stand them. The writing felt clunky at times, but if I’m being generous I can say it may just not be the style I prefer. The things I explain above just put the nail in the coffin and move it beyond simply very mediocre.

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"...I believe that anybody who says that sex is overrated just hasn't done it properly. I believe that anyone who claims to know what's going on will lie about the little things too. I believe in absolute honesty and sensible social lies. I believe in a woman's right to choose, a baby's right to live, that while all human life is sacred there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you trust the legal system implicity, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system. I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it."

“I believe in a personal god who cares about me and worries and oversees everything I do. I believe in an impersonal god who set the universe in motion and went off to hang with her girlfriends and doesn’t even know that I’m alive. I believe in an empty and godless universe of casual chaos, background noise and sheer blind luck.”

Neil Gaiman, American Gods

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American Gods: 👍 I think this was the longest book I've ever read. I read a lot of YA so I'm not used to the super longform style - it was cool & interesting and I want to read more now, but I also think that means I couldn't judge the book as well as I wish. Next time I read a book like this I'm taking notes, there's just so many characters and things to miss.

But I really liked it. (I read the author's preferred text). It was really cool how a lot of the small things throughout that just seemed like quirky elements & the random characters you meet all tie together at the end, that everything means something and makes a lot more sense by the time you're done. I'm glad I read the preferred text but think I would read the shorter original version if I wanted to experience the book again, which I would kind of like to eventually knowing what I know now.

The concept was just really good. I love talking about religion & religious figures and ideas and it was just such a cool thought in itself. Good book!!

couple more quotes below the cut, that I wanted to be able to look back on.

"Shadow shook his head. 'You know,' he said, 'I think I would rather be a man than a god. We don't need anyone to believe in us. We just keep going anyhow. It's what we do."

"Shadow has not realized that it was the Fourth. Independence day. Yes. He liked the idea of independence. He left the money and a tip on the table, and walked outside. There was a cool breeze coming in off the Atlantic, and he buttoned up his coat.

He sat down on a grassy bank and looked at the city that surrounded him, and thought, one day he would have to go home. And one day he would have to make a home to go back to. He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough.

He pulled out his book."

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Mary Oliver, “Don’t Hesitate.”