#4: This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

I like book awards good and well, but some book awards I ignore because I assume that since a book has won that particular medal, I will not like this book. Pulitzer, Nobel, Booker, National Book  – awards that supposedly go to the cream of the crop.The dual-edged sword of book awards, I suppose.

Why? Well, I am a curmudgeon with a taste for YA, no patience for the Long and the Dense, and prefer narratives that deviate from the Western White Male experience. Also see: curmudgeon.

Junot Diaz is an author who wins these big awards. But I read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao anyway. And instead of gaining a new respect for these venerable awards, instead of saying “Well, these Pulitzer winners must not be all that bad!” Instead of either of those logical reactions, I found myself wondering why in the world these award committee and critics would latch onto  a book that is so… not long not dense, neither Western nor White? Huh?

Now, I liked Oscar Wao, yes. But This Is How You Lose Her won me over. Written as a series of interconnected short stories, This is How You Lose Her is Yunior’s life, moving back and forth from his childhood, teenage, and adulthood, and focusing on women. His mother. His brother’s high school girlfriends, hanging around the house when Yunior was a child. His own high school girlfriends, his fiancee as he begins a career as a writer and his many girlfriends on the side. The woman who is pregnant with his child.

I wish that I could do this book justice here, but I really can’t. If you haven’t read Diaz’s prose, then you are missing out – it is fluid, readable, clever, and casual. This is a book about love and its many faces, and how people become the people they are – some of my favorite things to read about. I wish that all big award winning books could be like this one, and I hope that your library’s wait-list isn’t as long as mine.

#5: Dinner: A Love Story by Jenny Rosenstrach

I don’t have a tremendous amount of background in this particular breed of nonfiction, but is it just me or are we in the midst of some kind of literary-cookbook renaissance? A few years ago I checked out Alice Waters’s The Art of Simple Food looking for a little kitchen inspiration (I’d probably just finished reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, forgive me) and read it cover to cover. Read a cookbook. It was a strange feeling, but it sped by just like any other nonfiction text, only when I was done my book was full of post-it notes flagging recipes I wanted to try. I know that cooking memoirs were a thing, but this kind of book was more food than memoir, but just as readable and interesting.

Would it be cheesy to say I devoured this book? Well, I did. Ate it right up. Rosenstrach, who you might remember from this New York Times article or from her popular blog is just a ridiculously affable narrator of her own life. The book moves chronologically. Rosenstrach is a young urban professional looking for impressive dinner party recipes to squeeze in between trying new restaurants. Then she is a newlywed, beginning her life with a similarly foodie husband, their busy professional lives meeting every night at the dinner table. Then she is a new mother with a commute still determined to put something healthy on the table, then a stay at home mom. Probably drawing on her impressive Dinner Diary, Rosenstrach shares the best recipes of each season of life, the ones she relied on most, the ones worth remembering. As someone who can’t even remember what she cooked last week much less last year, this is an interesting, thoughtful way to frame a life.

I enjoyed Rosenstrach’s life story, yes, but I also appreciated the somewhat multimedia approach she gets at this story. Yes, there are vignettes, yes there are recipes. But there are also family photos, humorous conversations between Rosenstrach and her husband, handwritten bits, must-have kitchen items, etc. I especially liked her How to Feed A Family of Picky Eaters With One Dish technique of deconstructing traditional “grown-up” dishes to please most palates – any mother who can turn a frustrating dinner situation into a culinary challenge is the kind of mother I’d like to be.

This would be a lovely book even if all the recipes were complicated, gross, or inedible. But they are not. They are my exact kind of recipes – simple enough for weeknights, made of real foods, tasty and straightforward. I checked this book out and have renewed it a million times and have probably dirtied it up beyond acceptable library condition. I have little “DALS”‘s written all over my own dinner planning sheets. Favorites? Chicken and brussels sprouts and spicy zucchini eggs. You can probably find them on her website, or you could just do yourself a favor and buy the book. But ultimately, I don’t think I would have made so many of these recipes if I didn’t like the rest of the writing, the package, the Rosenstrach charm. The best part about these cooking memoirs and guides and blogs is that the writing and the stories create a sense of intimacy and trust that “celebrity chefs” just can’t do, inviting even novice chefs to try their hand at feeding themselves and their families. I make a “DALS” recipe because I trust it – Jenny wouldn’t do me wrong. I am glad that while I learn how to cook, I have these at-home chefs to ease me along and help me eventually trust myself to make tasty food, every night.

#6: The Fault in our Stars by John Green

I know, I know: the least shocking addition to this list. The inclusion of John Green’s latest is probably only surprising to those who did not laugh at this article about 2012’s most overlooked books. Seriously – how can a book that got a full page review in Entertainment Weekly and named Best Book of 2012 by Time Magazine be considered overlooked?

Sometimes I forget how small the kid lit/YA lit-o-sphere really is. We are a small portion of the population. We are growing, but still mostly overlooked. In The Fault in Our Stars, Green writes a satisfying, emotionally complex follow-up to three previous satisfying and emotionally complex novels. But he also did something with TFioS and Hazel and all those nerdfighters to capture a bit of the mainstream limelight. That is great. Welcome to the fold, new friends.

To be honest, I am 100% glad that I don’t need to write this post right now, that I have already read and reviewed this book many, many months ago. I am having a tough time thinking about it, a tough time wanting to write about good books – happy or sad – a tough time thinking that this world is a good place. I mean, I know we are all stuck here and need to make the most of it, but you know, there is just so much tragedy. I spent all weekend trying to enjoy a weekend with my future in-laws without fixating on twenty small children and their families, and then my grandmother died. I am headed to Ohio tomorrow, and maybe in a few months I should re-read this book and learn something about grief and life, but for now, I can’t. I can just keep trying to write these barely-reviews and go to work and shop for gifts and keep my head up.

~

I don’t feel like I am qualified to write a decent “review” of this book because yes, I am a full-fledged John Green fan-girl.

To my credit, I was a fan-girl before it was actually normal to say you were a fan-girl of John Green (iosome people prefer the term “nerdfighter”). No, I was just an adoring college student with a very tiny literary/not-so-literary crush on an author and his work.

But let me tell you this: despite years now of fan-girl-dom, I find that the more I read Green’s books, the more I like them. The more meaning I find within them. The more they stir up my emotions. I first read Looking for Alaska when I was a senior in high school; last summer I read it for the umpteenth time for a class and found myself Crying While Using Public Transportation.

Despite the near-continual hype – the tour bus, the video blogs, the thousands of signed books – Green continues to deliver.

The Fault in Our Stars put my little bit of Looking for Alaska train-boo-hooing to shame. Narrator 16-year-old Hazel has cancer. For three years, she submits to the gamut of painful treatments, comes very close to dying, and transforms from a normal teen to a sick one. She does survive, but only by the benefit of an experimental treatment and constant oxygen supplementation – she’s still frail, but now she’s isolated too. But when her parents force her to attend a kids-with-cancer support group, Hazel meets Augustus – a cute osteosarcoma survivor with a prosthetic leg who sets his sights on Hazel.

They fall in love. They take a trip to Amsterdam to track down Hazel’s favorite reclusive author. They get sicker, they get better, they get sicker, they get better. But even when they get better, there’s always the promise of getting sicker. And if they get sicker, there’s the promise of dying too soon.

Of course, this is also a very sharp, deeply funny novel. It’s not all kids-with-cancer. But what Green captures brilliantly here is that even when your daily life/immediate thoughts are not about suffering and unfairness and the insane brevity of life and death… your life is still about cancer and suffering and unfairness and the insane brevity of life and death. When you are a kid with cancer, these things are just closer to the surface. In many ways, this book reminded me not of other young adult fiction, but of books like Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking; narratives that transcend narrative and become primers for death, grief, and, ultimately, life.

So go read this book and laugh and cry because… yeah. Life. That’s it.

#7: Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Once upon a time there was a bandwagon that I was too stubborn and busy to jump on, even though all of my reader-friends who know me the best tried over and over again to pull me up along with them. Then Ms. Perkins finally showed up on a syllabus, and y’all know about me and syllabi – I obey, I follow, I worship.

The name of that bandwagon? Stephanie Perkins.

Now, I earlier this week I told a lie. When talking about how much I liked Anna’s follow-up – Lola and the Boy Next Door – I said that I am always looking for romance authors that I liked as much as Sarah Dessen. This is false. I am interested in new contemporary YA romances, but I rarely actually read them. I do not know why. Maybe because I am busy reading other stuff. Maybe because I am busy re-reading actual Sarah Dessen books. Maybe because I don’t feel like I need a “new” Sarah Dessen, because, um, she’s still writing new books regularly.

Or maybe because every time a new romance comes out, everyone insists that “fans of Sarah Dessen will just love this!” and then I read it and wonder what Dessen these reviewers are reading. Just because there is a boy and a girl who fall in love by the end of the book does not make the book any good.

We have established that I am a weird, old curmudgeon about teen romances, which makes me even weirder and curmudgeonly. That being said, Stephanie Perkins completely deserves any Dessen-related comparison. The bandwagon was right, and I am 100% on board.

Anna and the French Kiss has A Girl – Anna, senior, daughter of divorced parents, one of which is a fictionalized Nicholas Sparks of a Dad who thinks sending his daughter to a Paris boarding school for her senior year against her will is a grand idea. She has a best friend and an almost boyfriend at home in Atlanta. She loves films (not movies). She does not speak French.

Anna and the French Kiss also has A Boy – Etienne, senior, son of divorced parents – mother who raised him in LA, wealthy, douchey Parisien Dad.

Anna starts to fall for Etienne, a little bit, but of course Etienne has a girlfriend, and then we have a number of conflicts and oh-they-might-kiss!! moments and later, rinse, repeat, romance.

This could be any not-so-great romance, though. Perkins does the genre its due, yes, but also nails Anna’s narrative voice – quiet but likeable, tentative but not shy, trying to simultaneously discover her interests and motives while navigating the new waters of boarding school without dismantling longstanding social structures (see: Etienne & Girlfriend). The story is well-paced, the writing is smart, the characters are fun and likeable and realistic.

And – get this – you get this weird impression, as you read, that Anna and Etienne, those destined lovers you know will fall in love/hook up/get married before the end of the book? It seems that they actually like each other. This is what makes for a sizzling romance, in my eyes – the slow attraction, the wavering affections, that transition between nothing to friends, friends to more. Nothing Bella & Edward, no Perfect Chemistry.

Call me an old curmudgeon if you want.

But I think Maureen Johnson’s blurb really says it best:

“Very sly. Very funny.Very romantic. You should date this book.”

#8: Rookie Yearbook One edited by Tavi Gevinson

Look, guys. I am not cool enough to be into fashion, wear clothes that are not from American Eagle, or even watch Project Runway. I can’t even watch What Not to Wear, really.  I remember when the Internet was abuzz with “Oooh, Tavi Gevinson, 13-year-old fashion blogger who everyone mysteriously thinks is legit!” If it had been any type of blogger other than fashion, I would have have been all over it. But no, not cool enough for normal fashion, much less high fashion. Not interested.

Then, I started using tumblr (it’s okay, don’t worry, I don’t any more, really) and the twisted web of blogging and reblogging, I was led to rookiemag – the visuals, interviews with celebrities I actually care about, and topics of articles caught my eye. When I was taking my Young Adult Fiction class this past Spring, and I spent a lot of time thinking about websites and alternative print sources that teens would be into, that I would be into as a teen, Rookie Mag was on my mind.

It took me many months to realize that it was Tavi Gevinson, magical child blogger, who was behind the reigns. And until I read this article in the Washington Post about her (non-creepy) mentoring relationship with Ira Glass did I think about what an accomplishment this whole Rookie non-franchise is.

Rookie Yearbook One is a print collection of Rookie’s first year as an online magazine for teen girls. It’s impressively large –  a fun book to hold in your lap and to flip through like a magazine, but it’s still THICK with writing. Not necessarily meant for the read-straight-through – I wanted to, but my mind and then my arms would get a bit tired.

The types of articles are various, but in a magazine-like fashion, stick to a few formats and topics – interviews with off-beat celebrities, advice for social situations and coping, tributes to people and things the editors love, autobiographical guest articles about anything teen. Love, sex, boys, make up, fashion, things that are pink – all of these are present and accounted for.

But I can’t express to you enough how far, far away Rookie is from mainstream teen journalism. It is obvious that Ms. Gevinson has absorbed a bit of the 1990s zine culture here – the layouts, the fonts, the art feels homemade, like it is trying to be homemade. The Rookie team also has its own little landscape of pop culture influence that they have adopted as patron saints – movies, television shows, books, musicians, actors standing in for the broader swath of celebrity represented in traditional teen rags… pop culture that I relate to more than what is presented to me in Cosmopolitan… which could be why I find Rookie personally satisfying.

But beyond my own interests, by creating a little well-designed, curated sub-culture in Rookie, Gevinson and pals are speaking to teen girls in a way that the media doesn’t often speak to them: honestly, with a surprising amount of levity, and without the kind of corporate, stereotypical assumptions about teen girls and what they are into. No “Fifty Ways To Get a Guy to Notice You” articles, but maybe one about “How to Actually Speak to The Person You Are Romantically Interested in.”

Or an article about what kinds of food to eat in the middle of the night when you are hungry.

Or a five page essay on why Joni Mitchell is amazing.

Basically, I love Rookie as a theoretical piece of media, and also loved reading it, even though I am neither a teenager nor cool enough. Whatever.

#9: Titanic: Voices from the Disaster by Deborah Hopkinson

Not to pat myself too hard on the back, but this year, I’ve been a pretty good little blogger. I’ve posted regularly and written about a great many books that I’ve read. But now I am faced with the dilemma of loving books that I’ve already reviewed, extensively. Is it journalistically appropriate to re-post reviews? Should I think of some more blather to add to a previous review? Never mind the fact that I probably found the impetus to write so much as I was doing last year’s awards, wishing that I’d had already written up some reviews instead of waiting until the end of the year.

But no more hemming and hawing – too much hemming and hawing does not a good little blogger make. What follows is my original review. I read it in June; six months later, I still remember how easy this book was to read, and how well it was designed and organized. I don’t remember all of the stories and information Hopkinson crams into such a small book, but maybe that means it’s time for a re-read?

~

When I really love a non-fiction book, I sometimes get confused as to whether I really love the subject matter, or really love the book itself. Some stories are just so interesting, writing takes a definite backseat to content.

I feel like the Titanic is a good example of how this can backfire. The sinking of a giant, luxury ocean-liner is so compelling that almost any article/book/play/movie is going to illicit some kind of emotional tug… but after so many years, I think the vast majority of Titanic literature – especially for kids – is probably relying on the content to carry a lackluster literary execution.

One of the many books published in honor of the 100th anniversary of the ship’s sinking, Deborah Hopkinson’s Titanic: Voices from the Disaster, I think, is a rare success at both. As a non-fiction text for kids, the information is accessible and understandable, the narrative engaging, and the scope neither too broad or too narrow for the audience. (Can you tell I just took a course on nonfiction for kids? Oy vey…)

And just because it is a nonfiction book for kids doesn’t mean that Hopkinson’s treatment of this tragedy glosses over any of the rougher details. No, there is no gore, no descriptions of people sliding down the decks to their doom, but there is all sorts of heaping pain, here. Hopkinson really digs into that pain – exploring the experiences of all sorts of Titanic travelers. And more than that, Hopkinson calls attention to the questions of responsibility here that I think is unique for a book with a young audience. When a tragedy like this occurs, who is to blame? The very experienced captain who pushed the boat to higher speeds than was perhaps prudent? The nearby boat that heard Titanic’s calls for help but did not come to assist? The boat designer for creating a floating death trap, basing many assumptions on “best case” disaster scenarios rather than worse? The lack of safety regulations and practices? There are no right answers – Hopkinson lays out the facts plainly, without bias – but asks the young reader to think critically about these questions themselves. And maybe it doesn’t matter, maybe it’s a question of fate. The overwhelming tragedy is present here, too, invoking both the drama of the story as well as the emotional arc.

I was in seventh grade when the Titanic movie was released – prime age for weeping in the theater over a frozen Leonardo DiCaprio. I still love the movie, but after reading Titanic: Voices from the Disaster, I’m finding the actual events more fascinating than a Hollywood-style, fabricated love story. And with Hopkinson’s wealth of interviews, archival material, and photographs, this book feels almost as alive as a film.

The List by Siobhan Vivian

The week before Mount Washington High’s homecoming, the list appears. Again. Just like every year, the list provides the names of the Prettiest and Ugliest girls in each grade. And just like every year, nobody knows where this list comes from.

Ambitiously, Vivian tells the stories of all eight girls – eight alternating POVs, just wrap your head around that one for a second. This book could have collapsed at any point, imploded into a confusing puddle of nonsense. But somehow, Vivian pulls off eight distinct characters, eight distinct POVs that you can keep straight, eight well-developed characters.

When juggling this many characters, it’s natural that some will feel more compelling or interesting than others, but regardless of what I thought of each individual character, the whole was greater than the sum of the parts for me. The combination of voices calls attention to the ways these very different girls are the same; the list calls attention to the ways these similarities often relate to a misguided sense of self and learning to live under the male gaze.

But I am making this sound ridiculous and philosophical. It’s fascinating, yes, but it’s also a mystery. I read the last few chapters at the edge of my seat, no idea who the secret list writer could be.

Baby’s in Black by Arne Bellstorf

Some time deep into our August trip home – hours upon hours upon hours in the car – we ran out of music to listen to. The Boy put on the same playlist of Beatles songs we’d listened to countless times before. “Does it annoy you that I listen to so much of The Beatles?” he asked, and I laughed, laughed, laughed in his face. I love The Beatles, I do. If I had to pick a single artist to soundtrack the rest of my life, that would be fine.

Years ago, I read my first Elizabeth Partridge – John Lennon: All I Want is the Truth, my official indoctrination into Beatles history and lore. Baby’s in Black hones in on the earliest years of The Beatles, back when they were playing seedy bars in Berlin, back when there was a fifth Beatle named Stuart Sutcliffe. Stuart and his German girlfriend, Ingrid, are the stars of this book, but the other Beatles lurk around the pages along with Beatles lyrics, lore, and iconic imagery. Did I mention this is a graphic novel? It is indeed – all black and white and gray and moody and delicious. So you might like it even if you don’t give two rips about The Beatles, just sayin’. Also just sayin’: it made me cry.

Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins

Finally discovering Stephanie Perkins was a bright spot in a cold, sad kind of January. Lola is a likeable, somewhat mercurial artist-type with grand plans to build an epic Marie Antoinette costume. When she’s not crafting crazy outfits, Lola works at the movie theater, fights with her two dads, and hangs out with her sexy older boyfriend. THEN! Everything gets turned around when her twin next door neighbors move back in – one twin who used to be her best friend, the other who maybe was in love with her or maybe she was in love with him, and wow, that guy shouldn’t be moving in next door to a girl who already has a sex older boyfriend.

Good romantic fun. I’d been looking for an another author to live up to my Sarah-Dessen standards, and she finally came along. I look forward to years of fan-girl fun!

The Ivy by Lauren Kunze and Rina Onur

Sometimes, you love a ridiculous book.

The Ivy is about some characters who I’m sure have personalities, motivations, names. But no, it’s not about any of that, it’s about Harvard. It’s not even about Harvard, really – it’s about how bizarre social structures and habits look like from the outside, and how crucial and important it all seems when you are living them, especially when you are living them as an 18-year-old.

Okay, I gotta stop trying to be so abstract. The Ivy is about Dinner clubs and Your Rich Roommate and smoking weed in your dorm room and how weird it is to be a college freshman, especially in such a weird place as Harvard.

Also: ridiculous.

The Watch That Ends the Night by Allan Wolf

I keep forgetting that this book isn’t one of the billions and billions of nonfiction books in my life. It is researched, based in fact, about a famously-real historical incident, and the characters are mostly people who existed in life. But nope, this is fiction – a delightfully fictionalized true story, written in verse nonetheless. Longer review here. This is a book that I didn’t want to put down, but also didn’t want to finish out of sheer dread. A book that I shared with my significant other, read aloud. A book that I once left in the basement of my place of work and even though I knew it would mean speaking with someone I didn’t really like, I called work immediately to make sure my book was found and wasn’t accidentally sold (I worked at a bookstore, it could happen).

Now excuse me, I think Titanic just came on HBO…

Up next… Books for Adults!