This was a quick and somewhat tearful read. The teenage narrator, a talented classical musician in a coma after a car accident, must decide whether to live or die. While this is an affecting book and an interesting premise, I think there could have been more complexity on the death side. But maybe that's just a middle-aged reader of YA lit talking. I think teens will appreciate the drama.
I had to close some Firefox tabs because my computer was breathing heavy trying to support them all. But as I've said before, I can't just close tabs without taking care of them in some way--tagging them to delicious, doing the task that they remain open until I've done (usually adding a new library to my zine libraries list), or blogging them here.
Click "read more" (or whatever it says) for annotations:
Dick-lit. If I had to write a two word review of this book, that would be it. It's amusing, shallow, the boy gets the girl, and there's a fair amount of gross-out violence along the way. Although frat boys don't do too well in this book, they're a good audience for it. The author reveals himself—or at least the narrator—to be something of a liberal by ragging on Fox News, but really, if your politics go much deeper than Fox's, you might find parts of this book offensive.
This week on LCSH Watch
As regular readers of my zine know, Celia Perez is one of my best friends and favorite zine writers. Therefore it shouldn't surprise you that hers is one of the rare zines I'm including in my reading log. Since I read so many zines for work, it's just not practical for me to review all of them here, so I just write up my very favorites, and I don't even get around to them half the time.
Anyway, this issue of I Dreamed I Was Assertive is one of those zines that make me wish I was a better writer. I'm kind of ashamed that my messy old zines were next to Celia's on our table at the NYC Zine Fest! Oops, I'm making this about me, so I'll get back to IDIWA…
Finally, I'm back to some literary fiction by a woman of color. I apologize if that sounds fetishistic, but seriously, other than vampire books, that's what I like to read best! This coming of age novel takes place in Shanghai during the good old days of the Cultural Revolution and is told by Maple, a poor girl from a suspect family. (Her schoolteacher father made some unfortunate comments about Mao that landed him in jail.) Maple makes friends with Wild Ginger, who is one quarter French and therefore also branded counterrevolutionary. But really, Wild Ginger is a hardcore Maoist whose devotion to the man and the cause first elevate and then destroy her.
"Be careful with that statue," she warned as he turned. Toward the entrance there stood a life-size glow-in-the-dark Mao sculpture, its right hand waving above the head in the air. p.106
POTENTIAL SPOILER
"Yes! Do that again Maple, yes!"
"Chairman Mao teaches us…"
"No."
"Come on, Evergreen!"
"'People…people of the world, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and all their running dogs! People of the world, be courageous, dare to fight, defy difficulties, and advance wave upon waves.'"
"'Keep pushing the cart,' Maple!"
"'Keep pushing the cart until…until we reach the Communist heaven!'"
"Oh Maple, the blind woman is picking the peaches."
"And the blind woman has caught a fat fish—this is a miracle."
"Do the quotations!"
"You armchair revolutionary!"
He groaned, "Oh! Chairman Mao!" p.151
I wrote a four part article for Library Journal's Academic Newswire. The introduction and first part came out today. In the series, I interview several librarians who have been working in librarianship for 20+ years about the present and future of academic libraries.
Library of Congress Subject Headings Weekly List 21 (May 27, 2009)
This week on LCSH Watch
Love & Lies is billed as a companion to Wittlinger's Hard Love, a YA novel with zine publishers as its main characters. Sadly this installment doesn't involve zines--and weirdly none of the characters seem to be vegetarian, much less vegan--but it is still a compelling read.
Published in 1969 by a mixed race African, this novel about a farming community in Botswana clearly has a lot of weight, but unfortunately I lack the history to fully understand what's going on and its significance at the time. I think my reaction to the book would have been much more powerful if I could fully appreciate what was going on politically, and perhaps also culturally. The writing is fairly spare and detached, always third person, and moving from one point-of-view to another fairly rapidly.