Tuesday, April 28, 2015

The Darkest Part of the Forest

"The hardest thing about being wanted was the hardest thing about wanting- wanting badly enough that it gave you a stomachache, wanting in the way that was partly about kissing and partly about swallowing whole, the way a snake gulps down a mouse or the Big Bad Wolf gulps down Red Riding Hood-wanting turned someone you felt like you knew into a stranger."
Holly Black
The Darkest Part of the Woods

After the last book I was in need of something lighter, something a lot less, well, fucked up. For that I turned to the Indie Bound YA book of the year: The Darkest Part of the Forest. I was not disappointed. Holly Black serves up dark teen fantasy like no one can with real characters reacting to very unreal situations with the Fair Folk, strong female leads that kick serious ass, and a wonderful lack of love triangles. Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside started this trend, and Darkest Part of the Woods drives it home.

This story follows Hazel, an awesome, no nonsense teen, very real in her teen struggles of fitting in, and her brother, Ben, a 'gifted' musical prodigy. In the small town of Fairfold, they coexist with Folk, and visit the coffin that contains the beautiful horned boy in the forest....until it doesn't. 

This book pulled me through, with its old dark mysticism, and the wonderful character of Hazel, I was unable to put it down. I cannot wait for the next book Holly Black puts out. 


Sunday, April 26, 2015

We Are Not Ashamed Enough

"Women do not get raped because they weren't careful enough. Women get raped because some one raped them."
Jessica Valenti
The Purity Myth

Some books strike a chord deep in the readers soul because the book, and the characters in it, can be related to. The fact that far to many women will be able to relate to Missoula, Jon Krakauer's latest book, is one that is very disheartening. This book, and the events that it chronicles, have been the cause of so much political name calling, and victim shaming, and has shown the wide spread ignorance surrounding rape. It is an ignorance that we shouldn't be willing to stand for.

Rape is the most under reported violent crime. Studies have shown that only twenty percent of rapes are ever reported. And there is a reason that it is so low. Victims are often met with disbelief from the cops who are supposed to be investigating the crime, and subjected to blame and shaming from the general populace. The investigative questions often imply that it was the victims fault: "What were you wearing? Where you drinking? Why were you by yourself? If it is a case of non-stranger rape (over eighty percent of rapes are committed by someone the victim knew) seeking justice becomes even harder. It is a small wonder, with the trauma caused by coming forward, that any are reported at all.

In Missoula, Krakauer follows the stories of several women in Missoula, the nights they were raped, and the aftermath as the sought justice for the crimes committed against them. He follows their cases all the way through the justice system and what he found was atrocious. What is even more atrocious, is that the "Missoula rape crisis" is the norm for the frequency of rapes on college campuses, and the way the victims are treated is appalling as they navigate the justice system.

This book is important, and I do think that everyone should read it. If you have a wife, a sister, a daughter, or are the child of a mother, you should read it. Studies show that roughly one in five women are raped in their lifetime, and being that eighty percent of rapes are not reported the actual number is much higher. I can guarantee that everyone who reads this knows a woman who has been sexually assaulted. 

That being said, this is one of the hardest books I have ever read. It includes detailed testimony of several women, including the events of rape. I have friends who have been raped, and it hurt to remember the pain they were subjected to and the betrayal the experienced. The complete disrespect of another humans autonomy in this violent way is, in my mind, the worst crime that can be committed.

This book also made me feel deeply ashamed. Ashamed that this is the society we live in, and that a large portion of this society, thinks that the culture that allows these crimes to occur is acceptable. We are not ashamed enough. To be a victim of sexual assault has become a rite of passage for women in our society, and we are not ashamed enough. Men are not taught that disrespecting a persons autonomy is a crime, that consent cannot be given under physical and mental impairment, and the withdrawal of consent can happen at any time and we are not ashamed enough. And when these crimes occur, the victim is often blamed for what happened, shamed for events not in their control, and we are not ashamed enough. 

We are taught to be afraid of strangers when we are alone in the dark, long before we are taught to fear the wolf in sheeps clothing. It is not enough that we teach girls to avoid being raped, the idea in itself is absurd. We must teach boys not to rape, and the fact that this idea is so revolutionary is repulsive. We are not ashamed enough.
 


Saturday, April 25, 2015

Boy, Snow, Bird

"Wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking."
Helen Oyeyemi
Boy, Snow, Bird

Over the past several years, the book market has been flooded with retellings of fairy tails. Which, frankly, is awesome. So when I saw there was a retelling of Snow White that was set in the 1950's with no magic I was instantly curious. Helen Oyeyemi, the only female and ethnic author that I have read so far in this study (I shall have to remedy that), delivers with Boy, Snow, Bird.

This story follows the character of Boys, blond, beautiful, and otherworldly, after she runs away from her home in New York with her father, the rat catcher. There she meets a jeweler with a beautiful daughter, Snow. They get married and the arrival of their first child shows that Boys new husbands family, are light skinned African Americans passing for white in an age of segregation. The story follows Boys attempts to raise the two girls, and to overcome the expectations set on the family due to the color of their skin.

This book was charming and something all together new. I was very impressed, as most of it is told from Boys point of view, the point of view of the wicked step mother. She is completely human, and relateable. She makes mistakes and she fixes them, and she never is cast as wicked, which was wonderful. Her daughter Bird, adds a wonderful foil to her, and the two characters play off of each other magnificently. There are also a few Anansi stories included in the book, which was a great link back to the fantasy the Neil Gaiman spun together a few weeks ago.

Charming, and a quick read, I recommend this book. It is the book selection for my book group, the Rebel Alliance, for the month of April and I am very excited to see what they thought. 

Girl Books and Boy Books



I work in a small, independent bookstore and part of the job is being able to recommend books to customers based on what they are looking for. Most of the time this is a really fun part of the job. “I’m looking for a beach read.” Well, have you read Where’d You Go, Bernadette?
“I’m traveling to India and would like to read about about it.” What about Shantaram? It’s set in Mumbai. “I’m buying a present for a friend who really liked Night Circus.” What about The Golem and The Jinni. It’s really fun matching books to people, helping them to find books that they will love.

There are two requests, however, that I dread; it’s not because they are hard requests, but because of the underlying social issue that lies behind them. When customers are looking for juvenile fiction books they often request a “boy” book or a “girl” book. This was terminology that I hadn't heard until I started working in the book industry, I had no idea that most kids books fell into these two categories.  Geronimo Stilton books are boy books while Thea Stilton books are girl books; My Side of the Mountain is a boy book and Island of the Blue Dolphins; Harry Potter books are boy books (this claim left me speechless) and Emily Windsnap books are girl books. These were all distinctions I have heard from customers, and, not only did they baffle me, they made me uncomfortable.

Growing up there was no such thing as girl books, that I could read, and boy books, which I couldn't. I read everything from Hatchet to Ella Enchanted, Redwall to The Witch of Blackbird Pond, and I think that it was a very beneficial experience. It makes me very sad to think that there is a little girl being denied the experience of My Side of the Mountain, or a little boy who can’t experience Island of the Blue Dolphins. Both books teach important lessons like independence and self-reliance, so I have to wonder why one is for boys and one is for girls.

This genderization of children's literature worries me because it sends the message that girls should be taught different lessons than boys and that seems very sexist to me. I feel that it would be very beneficial for little girls to learn about the self reliance in Hatchet, and for little boys to learn about the friendship and kindness that can be learned from Emily Windsnap. These lessons are universal, for both boys and girls, as are the books that teach them.

And to those who have told me that the Harry Potter books are boy books: I would like to remind you that the only character to consistently have their act together through all seven books was Hermione Granger, a girl. If that self reliance, bravery, and kindness isn't a lesson that all children should learn, than I don’t know what is.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Red Rising

'"I live for you," I say sadly.
Eo kisses my cheek. "Then you must live for more."'
Pierce Brown
Red Rising



Set in the future, under the surface of Mars, Darrow is a slave. After the death of his wife, he is recruited into a rebellion to over throw the ruthless leaders of the Society. This book was phenomenal, and so hard to lump into one place. Think Hunger Games meets Percy Jackson meets Gattica, but for adults. Extremely bloody and violent, but at times beautiful and heart-wrenching (I cried in the first 50 pages).  

I was truly amazed with this book. It took such an interesting look at how eugenics and racism in the future could lead to. The main character, Darrow,  was a force to be reckoned with and the emotions all the characters in the book were very easy to connect and relate to.

Packed full of action, this is one of those books that is hard to talk about because I don't want to give anything away. Its wonderful, fast paced and gripping. Check it out.

Monday, April 13, 2015

What Shall I Stand For

"Every journey, wherever and whenever it begins, has a before and after"
Sean Prentiss
Finding Abbey

"Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul"
Edward Abbey


Growing up in southwest Colorado, surrounded by mountains and rivers and only a stones throw from canyon country, almost instantly give a connection to the literature of Edward Abbey. Activist, monkey wrencher, river runner, outdoors man, and writer, his writing shaped the way I see the world around my than any other writing. The Monkey Wrench Gang changed the American west, turning conservation into a main stream issue, helping to protect the wilderness so that it was not gone by the time that I was born. He was a man who took his stand.

I first read Edward Abbey when I was nineteen. My parents were passionate outdoors people and by that age I was already an accomplished river runner (not to toot my own horn or anything), and Desert Solitaire struck a chord in me. I was studying at Fort Lewis College at the time, majoring in both Chemistry and Philosophy, and just learning how to structure my thoughts and arguments, really deciding who I wanted to grow up to be. While five years later I'm still not sure, Edward Abbey has become a powerful teacher in my life, being the example of what to do and what not to do. He taught me that we must take a stand.

In Finding Abbey, Sean Prentiss is searching for a place to make his stand. In his search he decides to undertake the quest to find Ed Abbey's desert grave. Along the way he explores his ideological demons while visiting the places Abbey had lived and interviewing Abbey's close friends. The result in this book was an utterly charming literary travel adventure story, a very heartfelt and sweet quest for self discovery while examining how Abbey lived and how he died, and examining the need that humans sometimes have for wildness. 

I loved this book. Truth be told, I read it in a day. It was wonderful to see the author examine Abbey the idol with Abbey the imperfect, utterly human, man, and then see him experience the same conflict viewing himself as he was, settleing in suburbia, and himself as he wanted to be, taking his stand. It is a conflict that I think we often find in ourselves. It was also a wonderful examination of the authors search for home, a quest that I think all of us partake in at one point in our lives or another.

"What's the use: no matter where I go, what I do, I can't get the canyon country out of my heart. A love affair with a pile of rock."
Edward Abbey




Sunday, April 12, 2015

Gringo in the Sierra Madre

"Tienen derecho, as the saying went. They have a right to what they do"
Richard Grant
Gods Middle Finger

When I think of Mexico now days I think of drugs, cartels, Day of the Dead, and violence. We hear stories about kidnappings, rapes, and executions. The drug trade in Mexico is driven by supply in the United States, and we hear about the violence of the warring cartels and the corruption of the government.  I know that it's a generalization,  and that both times I had been to Mexico I had a wonderful time. The first time I was fourteen Cozumel was a stop-over point for the cruise I was on with my sister and my mother. We snorkeled, swam with rays, took a bus from Cancun into the interior of Quintana Roo to look at the Mayan ruins. The trip was heavily framed by the tourism industry: no violence, and a very limited experience of poverty. I was young and it was my first introduction, as light as it was, in another culture. 

For the next trip I was much older. When I was nineteen my father worked in Mexico, and for spring break my sister and went to spend spring break with him in Bahia Kino, a small town on the Sea of Cortez in Sonora. We flew to Tuscon, where our father picked us up, and the next day we crossed the border in Nogales and drove south to the city of Hermosillo. I remember how different things were when I crossed the border. The houses were much closer together, the streets narrow and dirty. The highway was completely separated from the city by a high fence. The drive down was long and hot. The Virgin Guadalupe was painted on almost every wall, and there was almost always a small shrine below it. The speed bumps were steep and sudden with bumpers and other car parts knocked loose by it in the ditch by the road (it wasn't often there was much of a shoulder). Crosses stood side by side down the road where people had died in car accidents. The small towns we passed through sometimes had a level of poverty that I had never seen in the States.
Once we had reached Hermosillo, we made the mandatory stop at the grocery store. When ever I travel somewhere I always have to go into a grocery store or to the market. It is the most local experience I think you can have if you are visiting for a short time, everyone shops for food, and grocery stores differ so much from place to place. It was huge! They had fruit I had never seen before, corn chowder made by Campbell's, Mennonite queso (I had no clue that there were Mennonites in Mexico but, it turns out, there is a sizable population of them. Mormons too). 

From there it was an hour drive to the coast where we spent the week on the beach, looking at shells and buying fish from the local fisherman. It was a wonderful trip (aside from a rather violent bout of sickness for my sister from the water. It's hard to get used to having to only use bottled water to brush your teeth when you've had clean water all your life) and I had seen very little of everything that I had heard of in Mexico. I was still looking through the veil of a tourist.

Richard Grant tried very hard to get beneath that veil. His plan was to go into Mexico and traverse the Sierra Madre, the rugged mountain range that bisects most of the country, and from this trip came the book God's Middle Finger. This was an epic undertaking as the range is long, wide, and rugged. Only two roads cross the range all the way through, and they are often plagued by bandits and cartel checkpoints. The last of the Apache hid in those mountains, outlaws have used them for centuries as a place to hide. Marijuana growers farm their product high up in their slopes.  Most of the violence and lawlessness that we hear about in Mexico originates from there, from cartel warfare to Mexico's war on drugs. I was really interested in this book for many reasons: I was interested in the cartels and the drug violence in Mexico, I was interested in the machismo culture, and I was very interested in comparing the very tempered trip I had gone on with the news that was often coming out of Mexico.

This book was a wonderful insight into what is happening in the Sierra Madre. While I know that it is far from a complete picture, and has bias as it is an American looking in and describing a foreign culture, it was and interesting look on what we often see in the news. There is violence, the author at one point is hunted through the night by two men fully intent on killing him, but there is also joy and revelry. Everyone is trying to make there way and survive, and who are we to judge them for doing what they must. Sure there are bad people, and desperate people, but there are also good people who are just trying to make their way.

This book was dark, but it was also hilarious. There is a remarkable ridiculousness to his stories that I couldn't help but smile at, the innocent charm of him bumbling his way through another culture, learning the language, and the mannerisms. While I may never travel to the Sierra Madre, I am very glad that Richard Grant did, and that he wrote God's Middle Finger, as it shows that the Mexican people are just that: people, even if they are complicated and confusing to us. The have a right to what they do. 

Sibling Rivalry of the Spider Gods Children

"Stories are webs, interconnected strand to strand, and you follow each story to the center, because the center is the end. Each person is a strand of the story"
Neil Gaiman
Anansi Boys

To begin this journey, I read Anansi Boys. Written by the brilliant Neil Gaiman (American Gods, Ocean at the End of the Lane), I knew that I would most likely enjoy it. Might as well have the first step be a good one. Anansi was a character that I had seen before in American Gods, and he was extremely intriguing in that story as the spider god, whom all tales and songs belonged to. But this, as it turns out, was not a story about him; this was a story about his two grown sons who had never met.

Spider and Fat Charlie have lived two very different and opposite lives. Spider has inherited all of the magical and charismatic talent of his father, and lives his life in the fast lane, while Fat Charlie lives out his days as a mundane accountant. When their father dies singing karaoke, they are thrown back into each others lives with disastrous results.

I highly enjoyed this book. Its many twists and turns kept me guessing, and the characters are entirely relateable. The sibling rivalry was fascinating as they get to know each other, first wanting what the other has, and then eventually, how they learn to love each other. The humor in this book was also wonderful. Gaiman did an amazing job mixing the jokes with the, sometimes very, dark humor. 

The thing that I loved the most about this book is that it was a lesson in telling stories. The entire thing is really Anansi teaching his sons his craft: how to circle and build and add characters and drama to the plot line and how to pull it all in for the common end. I feel that, as a reader, it is an interesting thing to think about because, so often, we are just experiencing the story: the plot and the characters. We are never on the outside looking in at all of the strands and how they twist and turn to make us feel emotionally attached to the characters and as if we are in the story experiencing it with them. 

It is so often we forget how much power a story can have. It can cause personal growth and change, Stories teach us lessons in empathy, and allow us to imagine how a character is feeling, which is truly remarkable when you think about it. I loved this book because showed how important made up stories are in a truly wonderful and subtle way, weaving together all of the strands of the spider web.




Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Beginning

This is it, the first post in a long term writing project. I warn you all, this is my first attempt at writing a blog; my first attempt, really, of keeping track of anything I read and writing about every single book.

This all started with a challenge from one of my coworkers at the small, independent bookstore where we work: to read 100 books in a year. It is a challenge that I gleefully accepted. 100 books in a year doesn't seem so hard. I then made the mistake of doing the math, and it breaks down to 8.3 books a month, a book every 3.5 days. Which is fine if you don't have other things to do, like work and family and all of those other important things. I'm a weird breed of special, so you know what: Bring it on!

That being said, I don't want to just rush through the books I read. I want to experience them and think about them and understand them. So, I will embrace technology and try to communicate (with somebody, I hope) about the books that will read. If you do find your way to this blog, please feel free to comment and suggest books and other such things.

This year I will be reading a smattering of things: fiction, non-fiction, sci-fi, travel adventure, natural sciences. No book is off-limits.

And so it begins!

Happy reading!