#9. And the Pursuit of Happiness by Maira Kalman

I am a big fan of Maira Kalman. I am also a big fan of American political history. I am also a big fan of heavy, colorful books that look nice on your coffee table, feel nice in your lap, and make you feel like you bought an object rather than a book.

And the Pursuit of Happiness is all of those things. This book was first a blog (what a concept! I know!) at The New York Times. After attending Obama’s inauguration in Janury of 2008, artist Kalman was inspired to spend the rest of the year studying the rich political history of American and American democracy. Each month, Kalman takes a mini-pilgrimage to a different place of historical interest, and she captures her trip with words and paintings.

I liked how this book was political without being political. Kalman’s work shows a real respect for the wide range of people who influenced our nation in various ways: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexis de Tocqueville, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and others are featured here. Kalman also follows democracy in all directions, visiting The Supreme Court, a town meeting in Vermont, and a 4th grade student council in the Bronx. This would make a really lovely gift for 9 out of 10 people. If you live in America, you should like this book.

But maybe I just liked it because it fueled my persistent historicrush:

Oh, Abe.

P.S.! Maira Kalman has a YA book coming out this month, Why We Brok Up, written with Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket). I would have read it already, but my cat went into my roommate’s room and dumped a glass of water on her ARC. Peach!! What is your problem??? It also has a cool/depressing website.

#10: Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden

For my Spring class, I read a lot of YA classics, or “touchstones,” as we called them. Out of the bunch (20+), the only ones I really loved?

The Catcher in the Rye

To Kill A Mockingbird

and Annie On My Mind.

That’s kind of a high compliment, eh?

It’s hard to read YA/work in libraries/get an advanced degree in children’s lit and have not hear about Nancy Garden’s book. For those of you who aren’t in any of those circles, Annie On My Mind was published in 1982, at a time when novels featuring GLBTQ protagonists were scarcely available or accepted. But, as you know, I’ve never been into history, especially YA from the 80s, and maybe I’m horridly heteronormative, but I never felt the urge to pick up this one on my own.

However, this is a prime example of how the almighty syllabus sometimes leads me to the kind of book I like. I loved this book because it was a contemporary YA love story, and a damn good one. Many YA romances feel forced to me, like an author really would like to create some romantic tension so they throw in a girl and a guy and hope for the best. But Liza and Annie have this authentic, complicated connection that is rare for two characters. I don’t even know how to begin to describe this in literary terms. Magical on-paper chemistry.

And if I am a sucker for YA romance, I am a super-sucker for YA romance that tells it like it is, and Annie On My Mind does that as well. As I read, I was rooting for Liza and Annie – just wait it out until college, ladies! It will get easier! – but I was also concerned that they were falling in love too fast, that someone was bound to be heartbroken because they hadn’t laid out the terms of their relationship, that their entire school and community would rally against them. And Garden doesn’t shy away from all of this – to a certain extent, all of these horrible things do happen to Liza and Annie. To make matters worse, this is a Senior Year book – the story ends with everyone getting ready for college, for a new life. Who knows what will happen after that???

And in case you need further convincing, I give you this: I read this book during one of my airline nightmare days, and despite being distracted by weather/running through airports/not knowing who was going to pick me up/fear of flying… I still remember this book clearly and fondly.

Forever… by Judy Blume

Ah, I used to really enjoy some Judy Blume when I was a child. Just As Long As We’re Together. Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret? I’ve read Summer Sisters more times than I can recall. Mmm. But despite my prodigious love of Ms. Blume, reading Forever still makes me think:

Judy Blume, you are a bad. ass.

This book is a like, no holds barred teenage love. Even 30+ year after its publication, and after countless other sex-fueled YA novels, it still feels kind of racy. And call me a sucker, but even after so many re-reads, I still root for Katherine and Michael to stay together. For Ralph’s sake.

Okay fine, I just like making Ralph jokes. So sue me.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

This book came in the middle of my Spring syllabus, like a breath of fresh air in the midst of a pile of rotting corpses.

Really, though. We read a book about a pile of rotting corpses. Gross.

This is one of my all time favorite books, and it stands up to multiple re-reads, sucking me in every time.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

I think I may read this book once a year, every year until I die. I am especially fond of the audio, read by the author – it’s great to listen to in late March, early April. It’s getting a bit warmer, you’re thinking about fresh produce again, you’re walking around out of doors again, enjoying nature…

oh good grief, I am annoying.

Going Bovine by Libba Bray

I liked this book the first time around, but I found it easy to pseudo-skim. Not skim-skim… I am not great at skimming. But a pseudo-skim is more like “I’m reading, I get the plot, but I’m not really focusing enough to really get what’s going on.” The nice thing about Going Bovine is that even doing a pseudo-skim, the book is enjoyable. Lots of plot-twists and jokes etc. But on my second read, I slowed down and found the novel to be this labyrinth of mythology and symbolism and weird allegories… so bizarre but so complex.

Hardly anyone in my class liked it though! What is their problem?

The Pigman & Me by Paul Zindel

This was one of my favorite audio books as a child, and I re-listened to it this year for the nostalgia of it. This is Paul Zindel’s autobiography – mostly a tale of his slightly unbalanced mother who dragged Paul and his sister from town to town and engaging in hijinks that ranged from the-stuff-of-sitcoms (getting so obsessed with Lassie she starts breeding Collies, improperly bug-bombing their house, etc) to completely tragic (threatening to kill herself when the kids act up). This is a great tween-age gem, I think: Paul is on the brink of deciding what to do with his life, about to become a teenager, but he’s trapped in a family and living situation that he alternately loves and hates. The rawness and the humor reminded me of Jack Gantos… or rather, Jack Gantos should have reminded me of Zindel.

Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas

This is my #1 most recommended, most lent, most given away book. We have owned a few copies in my household – all grungy and yellowed, some of them library rejects because we dogeared them so much they needed to be withdrawn –  and I think I just bought another because I left them all in Michigan. I recommend it a lot because it’s a solid YA novel that isn’t too whiny, fluffy, or girly, and also because I can trick Veronica Mars fans into reading it by throwing the name “Rob Thomas” about.

This year, I wrote a paper on it! I think this fulfills my lifetime dream of academicizing every book from my childhood that I adored. This paper was for my class all about THE BODY, and it was entitled “The Wildest, Largest Passions: The Male Perception of the Female Body in Young Adult Literature.” Sounds pretty racy, huh?

Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling

So, I re-read Harry Potters 1-7 in a span of two months.

Once I was done, you know what I wanted to do?

Start reading them again.

So I did.

I’ve been listening to them on audio, when I run/cook/clean. Oh, and when I fall asleep to drown out my neighbors, who have a tendency to choose my bedtime to park themselves in their own bed, directly below mine, and proceed to be noisy noisy noisy.

Harry Potter: Improving Lives Since 1997.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

I just finished a paper on this award-winning 2009 book, and while the paper was a fairly painful, convoluted affair, When You Reach Me was not. Mild spoiler: this is a book that once you get to the very end, you realize things about the stuff you’ve already read. So it was nice to read through again having the full picture. Also, Stead is just a fine writer. She can write romance into a tween-y type book that doesn’t seem forced or creepy. She can switch from prose that seem so mind-blowingly true you want to jot down quotes, to pre-teen mother-daughter angst, to goofy friend banter, and you don’t even know how it all flows, but it does. The buzz about this book when it was published was not just faddy chatter – this one has staying power.

 

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

You are all probably sick of hearing about this book, but I will tell you why I liked it on two different levels.

Level One: I just really enjoy parenting memoirs. This one is about as down and dirty as they come: Chua never pretends that her work as a parent is glamorous, even as she shuttles her two talented musician daughters from fancy lesson to fancy lesson. Chua is sure she’s doing the right thing, then she’s unsure, then sure again, and I could never quite figure out how she felt about the life she’d chosen for herself, her family, and her daughters. Parenting choices are cultural, personal, and bound to be wrong. Chua doesn’t back down from telling us the good and the bad.

Level Two: Sometimes, I don’t feel like Western media asks its viewers to do much interrogating of the status quo. Although I think most Americans would like to see parenting as purely a product of their own choices and decisions, I think much of what we think of as “good” or “bad” parenting is determined by American parenting culture. So I liked the way Chua questioned American norms, and I like the way her book creates a conversation about it.

My roommate and my boyfriend also read the book: my roommate was staunchly against some of Chua’s restrictions while my boyfriend, apparently, has Tiger Mother aspirations of his own. I am somewhere in the middle. Which could be potentially… uh… interesting. Check back in a few years to see how this all works out, haha.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

Okay. Running memoirs.

I don’t think I am a runner. Not yet. I have been trying to cultivate the skill for a few years now, but I still have trouble convincing myself to run for more than 2 miles, and 9 out of 10 of these small runs require stopping. However, I think my stamina is improving somewhat. I went for a run on Saturday for the first time since Thanksgiving morning; I ran a mile without stopping and without feeling as though I might die. It helped that it was below 40 degrees and I was freezing, I think.

Anyway, people always say that running is more of a mental game than a physical one. I don’t know if I agree, but I do think they are on near equal footing, and not in a way that I expected it. Mental Game, for me, isn’t about being able to shut off pain receptors during a long run, not about talking myself into going farther and faster than my body would like. For me, the mental game is tackling the thousands of things that keep me from running in the first place – managing my eating so I’m not too full or too hungry while I’m running, deciding on a “training plan” that will motivate me enough to keep going, knowing what to wear in what weather so I am comfortable. It’s also about acknowledging my body for what it is – a bit too tall, heavy, and wimpy to push too hard, to run whenever I want how ever long I want… but still capable.

And this book I’m supposed to be talking about? This book greatly improved my mental game. The book is a series of memoir-ish personal essays about Murakami’s life as a runner. And while I’m far from a marathoner or triathlete like Murakami is, he talks about the way running fits into his life in a way that is universal to even the amateur jogger. There’s one passage that I remember almost every time I run. Murakami was getting back to running after taking some time off and finding it difficult on his body. But instead of giving up/finding excuses not to go/taking up knitting/freaking out, he simply says to himself  (excuse my god-awful paraphrase) “My body is finding this difficult because it’s not a runner’s body yet. I am asking it to do something hard. But if I keep asking, day after day, it will become easy again. My body will adapt to what I ask it to do, plain and simple.”

Very zen, like the rest of this book. This was definitely a jot-down-quotes-to-remember-for-life kind of book, and I think that even non-runners would like it in a philosophical kind of way.

Good Eggs by Phoebe Potts

I love  love love a good graphic novel memoir, and I couldn’t put this one down. This Potts’s story about infertility, but it’s also a story about Potts. About how life, inevitably, meanders – careers, goals, beliefs, etc.  About recovering from depression. About falling in love later than you’d like to, but falling in love just as hard as you would have if you were younger. About entitlement, optimism, and growing up.

Oh, and I just love her art. I wish that she would make some more books, post haste.

Bossypants by Tina Fey

Like the poor Tiger mother, I am sure you are all sick of hearing about Tina-Fey-Tina-Fey-Tina-Fey.

I however, would like to bore you for a bit. This book is obviously a memoir-ish book by actress/writer/comedian, Tina Fey. I liked it because the humor was so hard to pin down. Fey’s lived an interesting life – a geeky childhood full of hijinks, an adulthood full of awkward jobs and relationships, and a comedy career that led her to a successful sitcom. Reading these stories is like listening to your parents tell you about their childhood – the stories don’t need much embellishment or added jokes, just a deft storyteller to recount them. But then she changes subjects completely, switching to a missive about parenting or a deadpan moment or a silly joke about accidentally becoming a Republican. She’s all over the place, and after a certain point, you can’t exactly tell what is supposed to be funny and what is a joke. It creates this strange feeling that although you are reading a memoir, you still know nothing about the author.

Ah, celebrity. You are so mysterious.

The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert

Oh, you thought I’d forgot about old Eustace, did you?

I did a bit of a longer review back in June, when I read the book, and you can read that here. Basically, I love Elizabeth Gilbert. You can’t make me not love her. I mean, have you SEEN this TED Talk? Anything Gilbert wants to tell me about  is something I want to know more about. Including reclusive, anti-establishment mountain-men who walk the fine line between passionate genius and passionately insane. Can I meet him? Can I meet them both? Can I go on a horseback ride across the country? Have some pet turtles?

One of those was a joke. I’ll let you decide which.

Up next… My favorite Re-reads 🙂

Tom’s Midnight Garden by Phillipa Pearce

I thought I’d start this 2011 Reading Extravaganza off properly with a book that was published in 1958. Nice, huh? To make matters worse, Tom’s Midnight Garden definitely harkens back to another book about gardens, written in 1910. Oh, and it’s a historical fiction time travel book, too! Oh me, oh my.

Tom is your average rambunctious young fellow who loves nothing more but to play outside. So when his little brother comes down with the measles, and Tom is relegated to his boring aunt and uncle’s apartment, the first thing on Tom’s mind is “OH MY GOD! THEY HAVE NO BACKYARD.” City-living, Tom. City-living. I feel ya. Anyway, so Tom is so bereft from his lack of vitamin D, he develops a nasty case of insomnia… but as he lays awake each night, pouting and longing for the sun and worrying about his health, he notices that  after midnight, the giant grandfather clock in the downstairs porch strikes 13 each night. Soon, Tom’s investigations reveal that every night, in that extra hour between midnight at 13, the parking lot behind the building becomes a beautiful, well-kept old-fashioned garden.

Okay, so maybe it seems like I am making fun of this book, but I really did enjoy it. I found Tom very likeable – quiet, inquisitive, a little sensitive- and I too became very interested in the hows, the whys, the physics of this “mystery garden.” As Tom becomes more involved with the mystery and the summer draws closer to the end, it’s fairly suspenseful to read along and wonder if he will figure it out before he must leave. I feel like this is a lovely classic-y children’s book that nobody has read, but more people should!

Diamond Willow by Helen Frost

After reading this novel, I have determined that I just like Helen Frost. I never feel particularly drawn to the subject matter of her books, and I am quite ambivalent about poetry as a form. But no matter my intentions to not enjoy Frost’s novels, I do. Actually, I feel a little fluttery about how much I like them. That’s rare for this jaded reader.

Willow is a twelve year old living in a small town deep in Alaska, where her family has lived forever. She has the usual smattering of twelve-year-old issues – grasping for friends, boys, and maturity – but what she really wants is to run her father’s sled dog team. She’s especially close to one of the lead dogs, Roxy, so when Willow loses control of the team and Roxy is injured, Willow is devastated.

What I loved most about this book was the way Frost interspersed Willow’s diamond-shaped poems – describing her sled-dog adventures as well as her everyday life – with poems from the point of view of the animals that watch Willow in the woods. These animals, the text quickly reveals, are the spirits of Willow’s ancestors. With this simple narrative decision, Frost places young, impetuous Willow within the context of this vast family unit, that not only encompasses her parents and relatives, but perhaps the entire natural environment where she lives. I find this to be a very compelling concept, and very well realized in this book.

Oh! And on a less abstract level, there’s a fairly awesome twist at the end that I definitely did NOT see coming.

The Old Country by Mordecai Gerstein

This story is one part fairy tale, one part folk tale, one part Holocaust narrative, one part complete nonsense. The story begins when Gisella leaves home on a grudge mission: a fox has been feasting on the family’s chickens, and Gisella is going to kill him.

The story gets weird when Gisella finds the fox, but the other woodland animals insist on a fair trial first, including a testimony from the chicken who has recently been ingested.

The story gets even weirder when Gisella looks the fox in the eyes for too long, and they pull a Freaky Friday mind/body swap.

Despite all the weirdness and talking animals and magic, I think the novel was supposed to, ultimately, provide commentary on warfare, on human oppression, and moral justice. I think the message gets lost underneath the crazy; there were many points in this short text that I couldn’t figure out if I was supposed to find a scene completely ridiculous or completely horrifying. But you know what? I liked feeling uncomfortable about what the text was trying to do. I liked the weirdness. I am not sure you could compare this book to anything else out there.

Half Magic by Edward Eager

That was a nice little jaunt into the 2000s. Now back to 1954!

Edward Eager’s Half Magic is a short novel about a large group of siblings who get into adventures together. For those of you stuck in the 21st century, think of a retro version of The Penderwicks! For those of you who prefer things to be logical, think of The Penderwicks as a modern version of Half Magic... which itself is a direct result of E. Nesbit’s work, but that’s getting a little bit TOO logical.

The children in Eager’s Half Magic are somewhat bored. Their widowed mother works a lot to keep the family afloat and their nanny is quite stuffy. When they chance upon a magic coin, their summer vacation takes a turn toward exciting – the children suddenly can wish for anything they want. But they quickly learn that the magic comes with a catch – it seems the coin only grants “half-magic,” meaning the children are constantly having to wish for things doubly and devise clever phrasing to undo their misdeeds.

Maybe I am just a sucker, but I was won over early in the novel when the youngest sibling wishes her cat could talk. The next chapter is filled with this kitty speaking mangled half-words (half magic! remember!), attempting to communicate with the children. Once they figure out how to wield their new powers, they determine that the cat is just plain distressed at its new ability, and they quickly un-speech the poor thing.

What can I say. I was endeared. The rest of the novel continues with similar endearment.

Clementine by Sara Pennypacker

Okay. Clementine. First, I present to you, Marla Frazee:

Marla Frazee is one of my favorite illustrators. She provides seriously impressive full page illustrations to the Clementine series that really do GREATLY impact the reading experience. Together with Pennypacker’s text, I found the first installation in this series to be completely beguiling. Yes, Clementine is Ramona Quimby, Clementine is Junie B. Jones, Clementine is Junie B. Jones… but Clementine is also Clementine. She’s self-consciously artistic, she gets upset at her family and friends, she’s ballsy enough to cut off her own hair.

She’s a little-girl character who is well-deserving of her own series.

Also see: Marla Frazee.

There was a lot of reading going on this month, 95% of it Required Winter Break Reading of Young Adult Classics.

Wait a second. Make that 100%.

What does this mean? That I should have been keeping a Death Count. Seriously, people are dying/going crazy/trying to kill themselves all over the place in historic YA!

1. Forever… by Judy Blume

I forgot how much I FREAKING LOVE this book. It’s 200 pages of amazingly raw first romance, gratuitous drama, and of course, sexy-sex. RALPH!!! Judy Blume is my hero.

2. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor

I was assigned this book for my Reading class in 7th grade… and I remember very clearly not finishing it on time and failing a reading test because I didn’t know what happened with some fire at the end of the book. I felt a little better when, 13 years later, I still didn’t quite understand what happened with that fire. I mean, I get it now, but it took me a few read throughs. Other than that, I was disturbed by how annoyingly didactic this novel is. “If you just go to school and save your pennies, you can rise out of poverty and racism and oppression, kids!” “Be one of the GOOD black people (Logans), children, not the BAD black people (T.J.) 1977 Newbery Medal.

3. Unleaving by Jill Paton Walsh

Rich, pages-long descriptions of the ocean. Thick, pages-long conversations between professors and students about the meaning of life and morality. If that’s what you’re into. Titled after one of my favorite poems. 1976 Boston Globe- Horn Book winner.

4. I Am The Cheese by Robert Cormier

Did I tell you that Robert Cormier’s daughter works at my school… and last semester, she worked withe ME for a few weeks? How bizarre, how bizarre. Much like this book! A psychological thriller with two competing timelines. I’m not sure I figured out what was going on by the end of the book.

5. The Language of Goldfish by Zibby ONeal

Really enjoyed this book. It’s a short, delicate story of a stressed out 13-year-old girl, a budding artist, who can’t figure out how to grow up and may or may not be going crazy. I wish I had time in my busy reading schedule to give this one another read-through.

6. Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson

Read this one during my hellish day of air transportation. A certain classmate of mine *cough* Kristina *cough* hated it and called the main character silent, self-pitying, and self-loathing. I suspect this particular classmate is not an oldest child with gorgeous, spoiled younger sisters. 1981 Newbery Medal

7. Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden

Love, love, loved this book. I wish that 95% of people writing mainstream, heterosexual YA romance/high school stories right now would read this and take extensive notes. It’s really pitch perfect.

8. Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid

A literal coming-of-age novel. Each chapter is an unfolding of Annie John’s life in Antigua, beginning with early childhood memories of idolizing her mother, through the social challenges of high school, and ending when she boards a boat for college off the island. Pretty readable, but I wasn’t in love.

9. House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros

I read this using my patented, completely ineffective method of Wii Reading. Meaning – Read 10 pages, play one level of Donkey Kong Country Returns, Read 10 pages, play one more level. Consequently, I don’t remember much about this one.

10. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers

This is a book about teenage soldiers in the Vietnam War. I expected it to be vaguely horrifying. It was. But I did not expect to actually enjoy the story. I did.

11. Remembering the Good Times by Richard Peck

Okay, there wasn’t anything WRONG with this book, plot-wise, content-wise, whatever. It was fine. However, all three main characters suffered from acute Dawson’s-Creek-itis, constantly waxing poetic about the Difficulty of Life, the Strength and Duration of their Friendships, the Horror of Growing Up. The three main characters are constantly running around talking about how close a friendship they have, how the three of them grew up together and have an unspoken bond of eternal trust. However, all three characters seem to have forgotten that A) They met A YEAR before the book’s main plot takes place and B) THEY ARE FOURTEEN. THEY ARE TOO YOUNG TO BE TALKING LIKE THEY ARE 50 YEARS OLD. /rant

12. Stotan! by Chris Crutcher

I forget that I like Chris Crutcher’s books so much… but there you have it. I do. Teen male camaraderie at its finest, and sports so well-rendered you’ll forget you hate sports.

13. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

Yet another case of the I-Swear-I-Read-This-Book-But-I-Really-Can’t-Remember-Anything-About-It. I was dutifully impressed, however. So impressed, I would prefer not to write a paper on this book. Unfortunately, the syllabus begs to differ.

14. I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This by Jacqueline Woodson

Ever read a book whose plot relies on some character revelation midway through the novel, and then you read it again and catch all the foreshadowing you missed in the first half of the book? Yeah, that happened here. Such a sad, sad book.

15. A Step From Heaven by An Na

Lyrical prose, vignette-style narration, depicting the suckiness of family life as a new immigrant. 2002 Printz Winner.

16. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Reading this for the umpteenth time, still tickled by Anderson’s wit and Melinda’s survival tactics. Will be spending a significant chunk of the semester thinking and writing and presenting about this novel… 2000 Printz Honor.