Nonfiction Monday Review: The Brave Escape of Edith Wharton by Connie Nordhielm Wooldridge

I'm kind of a bad English major - I've actually never read one of Edith Wharton's novels. So why did I pick up this biography? Because even if I haven't read her work, I'm still fascinated by women who defied social expectations and made a career for themselves - and Edith Wharton was certainly one of those women.

Born into a wealthy New York family, Edith lived a charmed life from an early age, especially as she spent most of her early years in Paris. When she and her family returned to New York, it was at a time of social upheaval, as the old guard of society was clashing with the uppity new money folks, who had made their money off of coal or railroads, rather than inheriting it as Edith's parents had.

While her mother was heavily invested in maintaining the old ways - notably including the notion that a woman's name should appear in print only when she is born, married, or has died - Edith rebels subtly. Obsessed with the written word, Edith writes mostly for herself for years before finally striking out to publish her works publicly - and under her own name.

Wooldridge has put together a fascinating look at this woman who was well ahead of her time. Not only did Wharton not much for social conventions against writing, she also made waves for socializing primarily with men in Parisian literary salons, spurring on the modern interior decorating movement, driving fast cars, and organizing massive relief efforts in Europe during World War I. But despite these trailblazing efforts, we also get glimpses at her weaker moments, too - her self-doubt about the quality of her writing, and the painful deterioration of her marriage and love life. The book is also peppered with plenty of period photographs and copies of Wharton's letters and manuscripts, really bringing the era to life. Living in New York myself now, I'll admit I was entertained to discover that I now work in the same neighborhood that Edith Wharton lived in when she was young - and chuckled at the idea that 59th street was so far up town that her family was worried they wouldn't be able to safely visit a family member that had moved there.

This is a lovely book, and I wouldn't really want to change anything about it, but reading this out in public was a little unwieldy, and it made me realize that almost all YA nonfiction is in a larger format than novels, or even a lot of nonfiction published for adults. Now, some books absolutely require large pages for pictures and for multiple pictures to be included right alongside the text in order to do the subject justice - Frozen Secrets and its amazing panoramas of Antarctica as well as its charts and illustrations of complex scientific facts comes to mind - but why must a biography be in the same oversized format? It makes it more difficult to bring the book along for reading on the go. Anyone out there know why all teen nonfiction falls into this format?




This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Picture Book of the Day. Be sure to stop by and check out the other great nonfiction titles highlighted this week!

Review: Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John

So...it's music week on Bookish Blather!

Well, not really, since I don't have another music-related title for Friday, but I've sure gone through a bit of a music spell the last few weeks, with Janis Joplin, 50 women in rock songs, and now a high school hard rock band with a deaf manager.

When the winners of the local Teen Battle of the Bands put on a show on the school's front steps that literally sets their amps on fire, Piper is fascinated. In a moment of recklessness, she volunteers to be their manager, betting that she can get them a paying gig within a month. The move shocks her friends and family; Piper is a quiet student who doesn't know the first thing about music - and she can hardly hear Dumb anyway. Piper is profoundly deaf and can only hear with the assistance of the Barbie-pink hearing aids she's been saddled with since she was 6.

But Piper is determined to prove herself as a capable manager - and she's desperate for the money, any money, after she learns her parents have plundered her college fund in order to pay for the cochlear implants of her deaf baby sister. Home life is stressful with the new baby and the constant reminders that even as a toddler Grace can hear more than Piper ever will - so Piper is willing to do anything and everything to get Dumb the publicity they need so she can restore her college funds and escape to the elite Gallaudet University with its extensive programs for the deaf. But the members of Dumb aren't always willing to play nice - members are alternately apathetic, diva-licious, angry, shy and outright incompetent. Piper has her work cut out for her as she tries to meld the five distinct flavors of Dumb into one harmonious sound.

I love pretty much everything in this book. For one thing, it doesn't follow the "standard" band storyline I've seen in so many movies. You know how it goes - band experiences sky rocketing fame, then falls into the temptations of sex, drugs and rock and roll, before diving into a self-destructive spiral that only ends when everyone hates each other and/or someone is dead. Instead, Dumb starts as dysfunctional - they only know three songs, and they're all covers. The band consists of a lead singer, a bassist, and a guitarist who only knows three chords. So first Piper recruits a drummer. Then the lead singer insists on bringing the school's resident hot chick into the mix - even though she has no discernible talent. It's a complete and absolute mess all around, but Piper - driven by desperation for money and approval - keeps on going.

Piper is far from perfect. She is not Inspirationally Disadvantaged, nor is she the Disabled Snarker or any number of other tropes for the disabled that pop up often in the media. Yes, Piper is deaf, and this has clearly profoundly affected her life. Sometimes she's bitter about it - or at least bitter that her sister is able to benefit from her treatment in ways Piper never could have. She's clearly not a saint, and pulls some really crummy moves in her desperate attempts at achieving stardom for Dumb. She is the very definition of a well-rounded character, and it's wonderful to watch her grow as a character throughout the story.

Five Flavors of Dumb also gets major bonus points for the subtle "Girl Power" message. Dumb ends up with two female band members, and they absolutely don't get along initially - but it's also because one doesn't respect the other's ability, not out of any catfighting scenario. And the two band members and Piper end up banding together at a crucial moment to offer each other support. John doesn't call explicit attention to these moments, but I've seen so many stories where girls have superficial friendships, or no female friendships at all, that's it's just fantastic to see these complex relationships play out in a totally natural way.

More bonus points, coming from this non-music person: John weaves a mini-lecture on the Seattle music scene into the story. Seattle, of course, has been home to some of American music's most influential players, and Piper is introduced to two of them via a mysterious scavenger hunt: Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix. The scenes that play out around the search for Hendrix's childhood home are especially moving.

And I know this review is getting long, but one last comment - what an AWESOME cover! It totally embodies the rock and roll feeling of the novel. I have so much love for this one, I'm surprised that I only found out about it through my library's "Teen Scene" newsletter - usually by the time that arrives in my mailbox I've read or requested every title! So thanks, Queens Library, for pointing this one out!

Nonfiction Monday Review: The Girl in the Song by Michael Heatley

Found via: Chasing Ray

I'm not generally a big music person - I'm not the type that is constantly hooked up to an iPod or streaming Pandora. The music I do listen to, however, I like to know a lot about. The lyrics at a bare minimum. When VH1's Behind the Music debuted, I was totally fascinated because I wanted to know what inspired people to write the songs they did. The Girl in the Song fulfills that need for me, describing the women who inspired 50 rock songs, by artists ranging from Buddy Holly to David Bowie.


Heatley arranges the songs by title and methodically spends a couple of pages on each song, dedicating most of the text to a biography of the woman and/or how she inspired the artist, and then in a box at the end gives a short introduction to the band or artist (as necessary - eventually all of the Beatles and Rolling Stones pages are dedicated just to the woman, because there's only so much you can say about those legendary groups without becoming redundant).

Perhaps because the book is limited to "rock" songs, it sometimes feels a little redundant - as I said, there are a lot of Beatles and Rolling Stones references. Even David Bowie has multiple entries. I'm far from a music encyclopedia, but were there no other songs worthy of having their stories told?

That being said, I did like that variety that is included. Most of the songs are well known by now, and some of the background stories are well known, too, but others are more obscure. Leonard Cohen wrote Chelsea Hotel No 2 about Janis Joplin. "Fire and Rain" was written in part as a memorial to a dead friend. I was especially fascinated when the same person came up multiple times. English model/photographer Pattie Boyd inspired at least three songs by two different artists - husbands George Harrison and Eric Clapton, and the Farrow sisters Mia and Prudence both inspired famous songs.

I really appreciate that Heatley keeps most of the focus on the women who served as inspiration for the songs. The artist's side of the story has already been shared with millions of people - it's about time the woman's side was shared. Heatley highlights how the songs popularity affected the women, and their own career accomplishments.

This is a quick read, but extremely fun for pop culture and music trivia fans. While it's not specifically a YA title, I think it will have a lot of interest for young music fans, and could be a great companion read to a book like Audrey Wait, which is all about how life changes dramatically for a girl who inspires a major hit song.


This week's Nonfiction Monday roundup is hosted by Charlotte's Library. Get 2011 off to an educational start and see what else is being reviewed today!

Review: Illyria by Elizabeth Hand

Illyria won the World Fantasy Award for best novella back in 2008, when it was published in the UK. Now, I have nothing to do with the World Fantasy Award (which is probably a good thing considering my general apathy for the genre), but looking at some of the other winners, this one doesn't quite seem to fit.

Madeline and Rogan think of themselves as two halves of the same soul. Children of identical twins who share a birthday themselves, they are inseparable as children - an intense friendship that grows into an intense love as they enter their teen years.

Multiple generations of their large family all live on the same block, all descended from a great stage actress, though Madeline and Rogan are the only ones who have retained a love of theatre and performing, encouraged by their great aunt who appreciates the art of theatre, though doesn't seem to perform herself.

When cast as the stars of Twelfth Night in a school production (Madeline as Viola, Rogan as Feste), Madeline and Rogan must begin to confront their separate talents and where they might lead them, even as their relationship grows in intensity in the face of adversity.

Notice how in that description there isn't much that would really fall into a "fantasy" story? It's more like what one of my college professors called magical realism. This is a rather straightforward story about two extraordinarily close cousins who face some adversity because of their peculiar talents and relationship. The fantasy/magical element comes from an apparently enchanted miniature theatre they find embedded in the walls of the attic, where the lovers escape for their illicit trysts.

While published as a YA novel, the only resemblance this has to most YA is the ages of the protagonists - but in some ways I never felt like I was reading about teenagers because Madeline is telling this story as a middle aged adult. I had only a tenuous connection with her during the high school phase, but I totally lost it once she skipped ahead to briefly show her life as an adult, and how her and Rogan's decisions from back in their high school days had panned out as adults. 

The romance between Madeline and Rogan is heady and impulsive - and yes, they are cousins, but really, we're still grossed out by that these days? Their familial relationship isn't fetishized - rather Madeline sees them as two halves of one whole, and it's the most natural thing in the world for them to come together. Maybe if someone in the extended family modeled a healthy relationship, or tried to speak to the kids frankly and without judgment, things would have turned out differently, but as-is, the romance was the least-problematic aspect for me.

Nonfiction Monday Review: Hungry by Crystal Renn

Found via: Amelia Bloomer Project nomination

I'm not a big follower of fashion, but Crystal Renn's name pops up periodically in any feminist discussion of beauty and body image in popular culture, as she's one of the most successful "plus size" models working today (never mind the irony that she's in the size 10-12 range - the average size for American women today). I hadn't realized she had written a memoir, but when I saw it nominated for the Amelia Bloomer Project, I knew I had to give it a read.

Renn's memoir looks briefly at her pre-modeling life, living happily with her mother and grandmother who always encouraged her to be happy more than anything else. Despite the hints at some complicated family issues, it's clear that Renn had a happy childhood.

Everything changed for her at the age of 14 when a scouting model looked at her and said she could be a star - if she lost weight. Renn says she's always been a bit compulsive and something of a perfectionist, and the scout's statement was the impetus for her perfectionist tendencies to be directed towards her body. The bulk of the memoir focuses on Renn's struggle with anorexia as she works in modeling in New York City - trying to live the dream, but never finding much success, even as her agents tell her to lose more and more weight. When she hits rock bottom, she finds the strength to get out, get healthy, and re-emerge on the scene, healthier and more talented than ever.

I've been questioning some of the Amelia Bloomer project's nonfiction nominations recently - not because they were poor quality titles, but because they really didn't seem to fall into the "birth to 18" age range the list is built for. Renn, however, is barely out of her teens herself - she's 24 now - so much of the book focuses squarely on her teen years and is written in a way that is totally accessible to teens and adults.

Renn's story is absolutely terrifying. The dominant narrative of anorexia is about girls delusional enough to think they're fat even as they're wasting away. Renn knew she had anorexia and avoided doctors even when she developed other illnesses or injuries because she knew a doctor would take one look at her and declare her anorexic. So why did she keep starving herself? It was the only way she knew how to stay working.

This is more than just Renn's personal story, however. She makes pointed criticisms of the industry and a lot of the "reforms" that have been "suggested" in order to improve the health of the women working the runways of the most important fashion shows around the world. She also gives great insights into the world of fashion that should disabuse anyone of the notion that it's full-time glamorous.

Renn's story is a powerful, positive message. When she switches to plus-size work, Renn is told that there will be plenty of work in advertising, but very little high fashion work. Renn sets out to prove them wrong, and is obviously succeeding considering how often she's been on the covers of magazines around the world. She was in the news again late last month, coming forward with allegations that she'd been photoshopped to look dangerously thin. She acknowledges in the book even that photoshopping is a way of life in the industry - getting rid of zits and stray hairs are great since fashion photography isn't about creating a documentary - but it's clear she has a strong personal line and woe to the photographer that dares to cross it.

This will definitely be of interest to anyone who's curious about the pressures of the entertainment industry - for a lot of what goes on in modeling goes on for other performers as well. It's an inspiring story of overcoming a deadly illness and not letting anything hold you back.


This week's Nonfiction Monday is hosted by Three Turtles and their Pet Librarian. Be sure to stop by and see the other nonfiction posts this week!

Nerds Heart YA Discussion: The World is Mine by Lyah B. LeFlore

Today's the big day, the first day results are being posted for the first round of the Nerds Heart YA tournament, all about underrepresented, diverse YA books. I had the pleasure of judging this round with Lorin of Arch Thinking, pitting The World is Mine against Donut Days by Laura Zielin. Continue reading for our discussion about The World is Mine, then continue on to Arch Thinking for our Donut Days discussion. At noon Eastern time we'll post our comparison of the two books and declare a final winner!

Angela

Let's start by talking about The World is Mine. I liked the variety of characters in the book and how we got to spend a little bit of time in everyone's head and see what was important to them and why they were in on Blue's venture. I also really, really liked seeing a book where the majority of the characters are non-white, but they aren't all down-on-their-luck drug dealers or anything. There's a variety of socio-economic statuses, a variety of academic success, etc.  

However, I have to admit that the slang really, really irritated me. Not the presence of it, but the way the author had to *explain* it to us. I lost track of how many times a slang word was followed by "which in our world means..." And while I liked the inclusion of the rap/hip hop lyrics at the beginning of the chapters, they were integrated awkwardly into the text: "Like Kanye's famous line, Mo' money mo' problems." The grammar felt really artificial there. Overall it felt like the book wasn't written for teens who are living lives like Blue and his friends, but for the kids in the suburbs who want to mimic the "urban lifestyle."

I was also totally frustrated by the cliffhanger ending. I felt like there was absolutely no resolution for any of the plot threads.

Lorin

The ending! I was so annoyed when I read the last page. It really bugs me when books don't even pretend to be anything more than a way to make you buy the next book.

I think you hit the nail on the head regarding the audience for this book. And I think this made the dialogue feel stilted. Which was too bad because I really liked most of the characters. It helped that we spent time with many of them, which I agree that I liked. But I was also charmed by some of the other characters, like Blue's dad and Whiteboy's landlady. They came across as really genuine people whose problems I care about. Which brings me back to the ending - I guess it's a good thing that I want to know what happens next, but I think the author has lost my trust. If every book is a cliffhanger, I'm going to get jaded and stop caring.

Angela

I kept comparing the cliffhanger ending to the endings of Hunger Games and Catching Fire in my head, only because those are the two biggest cliffhangers I've seen recently. Those worked because something major was resolved - IE, the titular Hunger Games, but in the last few pages, a *new* twist was added, so you not only felt one story was completed, but there was another one to look forward to. I wanted something resolved - a truly successful party, the issue of  Mamie's track - so I had a complete story to reflect on before building anticipation for the next story.

Lorin 

The thing I thought about a lot when I read this book was how most of Blue's problems were of his own making. Some weren't (like the issue about college) but the problems with Collin and Mamie were. I get that it's a personality flaw but I did want to scold the boy half the time. I just wish he had been a little more self-aware.  

Angela

Blue...I kinda wanted to kick him in the face sometimes. He was totally dismissive of and just a little bit sexist towards Mamie. The sexism came in for me because he seemed unable to refer to her without labeling her as the *girl* DJ. It was irritating because while I can handle a flawed protagonist (in fact, the best ones are far from perfect), he had some glaring personality flaws that made him downright unlikeable sometimes. His problems with Collin seemed to mostly stem from an inability to listen - which I totally bought because Blue was caught up in his big dreams and who wants to listen to reality then?! But he was rather vile about Mamie, and was creeping me out a bit towards the end when he was wondering how long Jade was "gonna make a brother wait." Independently, that bit with Jade would just be typical male posturing, but combined with the Mamie issues it was clear Blue's got some messed up issues with women.  

Lorin

I hadn't really picked up on Blue's women issues until you pointed it out, but I definitely see what you mean. (Interestingly, his mom isn't really a developed character in the book - Collin's off-screen mom is more fully developed. I wonder if the author will make more of this in her next installment.) Mostly though, I just thought his ego was bigger than he was - and from what I've heard of his favorite role model, Diddy, that's probably pretty accurate.

Summary:

-     Good variety of characters

-     Interesting structure

-     Unsympathetic main character (but sympathetic supporting characters)

-     Annoying cliffhanger ending

Remember: check out Arch Thinking for our Donut Days thoughts, then come back at noon for our comparison and final decision!

Review: Scarlett Fever by Maureen Johnson

Yay, another Scarlett book! I loved Suite Scarlett, so I was checking my library every day after Scarlett Fever was published to make sure I'd get this one ASAP!

Scarlett Fever picks up shortly after Suite Scarlett left off - Hamlet has closed and the set is being struck. Lola is still at her job at the spa. Spencer has signed with newly minted agent (and former Hopewell Hotel guest) Amy Amberson, and Scarlett is her assistant. Melanie is at her Powerkids summer camp, so Scarlett has a few blessed days without her antagonism to wallow in her own self-pity.

Why is Scarlett wallowing? She's still hung up over Eric, the super cute Southern boy who teamed up with Spencer in Hamlet and was a total jerk to Scarlett by seeing her when he already had a girlfriend back home.

Yeah, I wasn't an Eric fan.

School is about to start, and happens to bring big changes to the Martin family. Perhaps the biggest is Spencer's surprise role in Crime and Punishment (an homage to Law and Order) which makes him an overnight celebrity - the kind that attracts semi-creepy people to wander into the hotel and up into the family's living quarters looking for him. Chip, Lola's former boyfriend, is back in the picture with Lola, much to Spencer and Scarlett's disappointment. Oh, and Melanie? Melanie is back from camp and being nice. It totally freaks Scarlett out.

And Scarlett has enough on her plate. Mrs. Amberson is as demanding as ever - she wants to sign a promising young Broadway performer to the agency. Chelsea is 15 and has a beautiful voice, but is stuck in one of the worst Broadway performances in memory. Not to mention she is saddled with a crazy stage mother and a bitter older brother who just so happens to sit next to Scarlett in biology class. Mrs. Amberson has asked Scarlett to "keep an eye" on him on top of her assistant duties, which now include taking a terrified little dog out for daily walks. And to top everything off - Eric is trying to hang around again, ostensibly to get Scarlett's advice on acting, but how is she supposed to get over him if he won't just leave her alone?

I love the Martins. They are a crazy, mixed up, and totally loving family. Even Melanie this time around! (Even though I agree her being nice is really kinda creepy). I also love Johnson's descriptions of New York City. I've been here a year and a half now so I'm really beginning to get the geography. I also cackled with glee when Scarlett took Chelsea to my favorite food place in Manhattan, the Shake Shack.

Johnson also does a great job with the class issues the Martins face, both subtle and overt. The subtle bits are with Scarlett and her relationship with money and her thoughts about her friends who clearly have more money than her (friends who spent the summer in Europe rather than staging plays in their dining rooms). On the one hand it seems like her family should be fabulously wealthy since they own a hotel and all, but since the hotel gets next to no guests and the massive medical bills that piled up during Melanie's cancer, money is tight in the household. More overt bits are with Lola and Chip and his family. Chip comes from money and some of the Martins, Scarlett and Spencer in particular, feel he's a bit ostentatious with it. There are serious questions of why Lola is back with him, so once more I really appreciated a look at life for a family that is neither incredibly rich nor nearly destitute. The Martins get by, but it's no cakewalk.

Two gripes on this book: first of all, it just ends. It's really abrupt and I closed the book thinking "that's it?" The last scene isn't bad (it's actually quite hilarious), but it doesn't feel like a complete ending. There's definitely more Scarlett books to look ahead to, I guess.

Second of all, I feel totally bleh about the cover


It's a golden key on a purple wallpaper background. It feels dull. It's really uninspiring to me.

Suite Scarlett in paperback has been redesigned to have a coordinating cover. I'm not saying the original cover was perfect, but it had a bit more character than the new covers:


I have some nitpicks on this cover - Scarlett's hair is way too perfect for example - but that's so minor and so nitpicky that it doesn't matter. At least it has more character than the new ones.

Cover and ending aside, this is another great Maureen Johnson book. She has her own brand of wit and humor and uses it with ease. Scarlett Fever works excellently as a sequel (right up until that ending), and I can't wait to read the next Scarlett story.

Review: The Girl Who Threw Butterflies by Mick Cochrane

Found via: Amelia Bloomer Project and Bookends


(My husband and I with our peanuts and Cracker Jacks at the Mets vs. Marlins game on 9/9/09. Marlins won, 6-3, much to my husband's chagrin!)

For several summers during elementary and middle school, my nightly ritual involved playing catch with my dad in our front yard at dusk. Dad taught me everything I know about baseball, and our nightly games of catch were about the only time we could be together and not end up in some sort of fight. Eventually simple games of catch became learning how to pitch for real, and I developed a pretty good fastball - I was even planning on being the first woman to pitch in the major leagues some day - until Dad informed me that gender discrimination laws don't extend to professional sports.


(Never would have needed this sign if I were at bat - while I could pitch I was a terrible batter, at least when we played softball in gym class)

Luckily for Molly in The Girl Who Threw Butterflies, her dad wasn't the downer that mine was. When Molly asks if a girl could ever play baseball, he initially says no, then backs up and says she could probably be a pitcher. And proceeds to teach her how to throw a beautiful knuckleball (personal note: my dad would never teach me the knuckleball. Said it would hurt my arm. I have no idea if this is true - it never comes up for Molly. No, I'm not still bitter ;-)

Molly and her mother are now grieving the loss of Molly's father in a car accident. The next spring, as sports season approaches, Molly decides it's time to stop playing softball, and use the baseball knowledge her dad taught her to play ball with the boys.

Cochrane has crafted a very nuanced book, that perfectly balances the sadness of a girl missing her dad with the exhilaration of playing a sport well and defying the odds. Molly meets some resistance from some of her teammates, but it never overpowers the rest of the story - it's there to add some drama, but never distracts from the main drama of Molly's coming of age and playing the game. Also done excellently was Molly's best friend Celia, middle school feminist and one of Molly's two biggest supporters in her baseball quest. A must read for baseball fans!

(Can't post the picture here, since I'm not willing to actually pay for this, but one last baseball photo: me, my husband, and my parents at the Mets/Marlins game, posing with the foul ball my dad caught!)

Review: The Girl in the Arena by Lise Haines

When I was wandering the floor at BEA last weekend, I was passing the Bloomsbury booth when I heard one of the workers handing a galley to another attendee saying "This is for Hunger Games fans." I stopped in my tracks and quickly got my own galley of The Girl in the Arena, excited for the possibility of something to tide me over between Catching Fire and whatever the next book is (does anyone know what the third one will be called?)

I first grew suspicious over whether I would actually enjoy the book when I noticed the back cover says that not only is it for fans of The Hunger Games, but Fight Club as well. Granted, I've never read Fight Club, but I've seen the movie and Wikipedia'd the novel, and it really seems like the only thing it has in common with Hunger Games is people beating the crap out of each other. So what on earth would Girl in the Arena have in common with my beloved Hunger Games?

Turns out it's mostly the girl-going-to-fight-to-the-death plot.

The Girl in the Arena presents a bit of alternate history - after losing his son in an attempt to dodge the draft in Vietnam, a man decides to re-create the ancient sport of gladiators in order to give young men (and originally it was all men, though eventually women were allowed some participation) a healthy outlet for their aggression. Eventually he hopes that the gladiator sport will be so successful it will remove our need for armies and war. (This whole thing never quite made sense to me - especially the part about fighting as a gladiator as an alternative to military service in Vietnam. Last I checked, people weren't exactly signing up to fight in Vietnam in large numbers because they wanted to kill people - they were drafted, whether they needed an outlet for their aggression or not.)

Over the years, this underground group of gladiators gains more and more attention, with a complex set of rules governing their fights and behavior outside of the ring. Eventually it gains the fame of other major sports, and the complex rules and bylaws begin extending beyond the gladiators themselves to their wives and children. One of these archaic rules involves the "dowry bracelets" that daughters of gladiators wear. If a gladiator other than her father possesses the bracelet, the daughter is required to marry that gladiator. In a tragic turn of events, our protagonist Lyn had given her seventh father (her mother's seventh gladiator husband) her dowry bracelet for good luck on the morning of what ended up being his last fight. After Lyn's father has been brutally cut down in the ring, his opponent, Uber, picks up the bracelet, thinking it is nothing more than a trophy from his latest kill. Thanks to the obsessive paparazzi, however, it doesn't take long for everyone to discover who the true owner of the bracelet was, and what this means for Lyn now.

Lyn has long been at odds with her mother, Allison, and gladiator culture in general. Lyn has started to consider herself a pacifist - the antithesis of the hyper violent gladiator fights - and finds her mother's behavior as a career gladiator wife backwards at best. Freshly 18, Lyn wants to move beyond life as a member of "glad culture," but with Uber's capture of her dowry bracelet, she must find a way to navigate the tricky rules that govern glad culture to find an acceptable way out of the engagement while protecting her mother and her younger brother.

There are a lot of surface comparisons to be made between Girl in the Arena and The Hunger Games (and there are a few minor plot points that have an eerie similarity to minor points in Catching Fire as well), but nothing deep enough that would have me legitimately recommending this to someone based solely on their love of Hunger Games. Yes, Lyn ends up in the arena to fight to the death and she does it in a round about way to protect her family, much as Katniss participates in the Games in order to protect her sister. But in The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins developed a horrifically blood thirsty culture, where most of the sane people in the districts realizes these fights to the death among children are disgusting and wrong. In Girl in the Arena, gladiators are always adults, they are always volunteers, and since a gladiator fight is little more than a sporting event, most people can avoid them (and in fact Lyn mentions having lots of problems at school because she is one of only two gladiator kids at her school). The crazy rules that extend beyond the gladiators to their families are stifling, yes, but violating those rules means losing your contract or your family loses prestige and money - a far cry from the lethal punishment handed out in District 11 to a child who just wanted to play with nightvision goggles.

Additionally, Girl in the Arena tries so hard to be cool at times that it's a book I see becoming dated very, very soon. I can only sit through so many references to YouTube, Second Life (seriously, does anyone still play Second Life anymore?), and the Virgin Megastore before my eyes start to glaze over. Plus the author totally got the format of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart wrong - something so small, but would have been SO EASY to actually research. Yes, it's a bit of alternate history so some things can be forgiven (maybe in this reality Jon Stewart hosts an hour long show with multiple guests?) but with all of the attempts to be cool it just got grating after awhile.

Review: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

When I heard earlier this year that the galley for Catching Fire, the sequel to Hunger Games, one of my favorite books of last year, was going to be at Book Expo America, I cursed my current employer. Since we already have a showroom in New York, and BEA was going to be in New York, we decided to just have all of our clients come into the showroom. Which meant there wasn't going to be a way for me to sneak out onto the floor to score myself a copy of the book. ~sigh~

But eventually word got out that little ol' Angela really, really wanted to get on the floor at BEA. So strings were pulled, and by the end of the day yesterday I had a pass to get onto the floor. So I woke up ridiculously early for a Saturday to make sure I would be at the Javits Convention Center right around 9:00 when the floor opened.

I ended up getting there around 9:30 (stupid E train running local through Queens. You're supposed to be express!) - and already there was a huge line at the Scholastic booth for the galley, which was being given away at 10! I was a little nervous about whether I would make it to the front of the line before they ran out of books, but it turns out I didn't need to worry - there were plenty of books to spare by the time I made it to the front of the line.

Now I must confess, I seriously considered finding some out of the way spot right then and there and starting to read. But when I was getting in line I happened to bump into a friend who was working at the show and had actually volunteered to pick up the galley for me, so instead I decided to be social and went with her to see Scott Westerfeld, Holly Black and Cassandra Clare talk about steampunk and building alternate worlds. Then we had to go pick up the Leviathan galley, but that's a post for another day.

It was a gorgeous day in New York, so I decided to take my new galleys and check out the new lounge chairs in Times Square. Naturally I started with Catching Fire.

While my copy of the galley didn't specifically request I avoid discussing the twists and turns of the novel, I'm still going to avoid a detailed plot summary for a couple of reasons. Mostly because I'm still trying to wrap my brain around a lot of the plot.

But let me assure you, this novel will in no way disappoint fans of The Hunger Games. Suzanne Collins is an extremely deft writer - I noticed this as I re-read Hunger Games twice over the last three days. Both Hunger Games and Catching Fire are extremely tightly woven stories - if Collins mentions something early on in the book, you can bet it will play a part in the story later on. Of course, now that I was on to her, I was feeling rather smug going into Catching Fire, sure I'd be able to predict the plot based on Collins' effective foreshadowing. Boy was I wrong - while I often caught what was going to be important later on, there was absolutely no way of predicting just HOW that plot point was going to be implemented.

Like Hunger Games, I was an extremely vocal reader during Catching Fire (so much so that I eventually decided I needed to leave Times Square and read in the solitude of my apartment). I may even have been more so this time, thanks to the deeper emotional investment we have this time around. We've watched Katniss survive insurmountable odds once - to see her thrown back into the fire after the president's reaction to her stunt at the end of the Hunger Games is almost too much.

And of course, we're left with another fucking cliff hanger. There seems to be a consensus here: as awesome as it is to get to read this galley, it's going to make the wait for the third book even longer - especially if, as this Publisher's Weekly article says, they don't do a galley for the third book!

Review: Down to the Bone by Mayra Lazara Doyle

Yesterday was a bad book day for me. I had several long subway rides, and I had this and Feathered with me - I was very unhappy for most of the day. Reading disappointing books can throw off my whole day.

Down to the Bone doesn't waste any time in letting us know what this book is going to be about. On the first page Laura is reading a love letter from her girlfriend in the middle of class on her last day of her junior year of high school, and by page 10 the note has been discovered by her teacher, read in front of the class, and Laura has been thrown out of her conservative Latino Catholic high school for being a tortillera. Shortly after, Laura is also thrown out of her house, along with her little puppy (who has so many cutesy nicknames half the time I didn't recognize the dog when it was called by its actual name), because not only is she a "degenerate," but she won't reveal her girlfriend's identity.

From there, the story rambles on, jumping ahead months at a time in order to reach the next significant plot point. Laura's girlfriend, Marlena, is shipped back to Puerto Rico to marry a guy when her family discovers her diary and her writings about Laura. Laura pines over Marlena and is heartbroken when she calls up to say they were both sick and wrong and that she wholeheartedly loves her new heterosexual life. From there, Laura - who is also now determined to be straight in order to get back into her mother's good graces and see her little brother again - falls in with a huge group of friends of varying stages of queerness, which seems like an odd choice for a wanna-be straight girl. She has to deal with her conflicting feelings for the lone straight guy in the group, her mad crush on a waitress at a local gay restaurant, and hostile co-workers.

All in all, way too much was happening in this novel. On the back cover, Brent Hartinger asks where all the lesbian books are, and where the racial diversity is at in young adult queer lit. Well, I don't know where Brent has been, but lesbian protagonists aren't a new thing (and in my experience, their books tend to be better than the gay male books...). As for the racial diversity, yes, there has been a lack of that in YA queer lit, but do we have to accept a sub-par book in order to start filling that gap? It feels like Doyle recognized we need more young lesbians of color in literature, and decided to tackle every possible permutation of The Gay Book in her one novel in order to fill the gap. And all of these problems feel like they've been put there in order to avoid writing an actual plot.

The biggest offense in this book has absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality, but is actually the writing style itself. We are told everything in this book (sometimes in excruciating detail - do we need to know her right hand slapped her right thigh and she raised her left eyebrow? I'm really not even exaggerating that example) rather than shown it. We are told that Laura likes giving natural things as gifts, followed by an awkward and out of place paragraph detailing why. Every time a new person joins the group there's another awkward introduction scene where details of a character's personality, that don't have any bearing on the plot, are re-hashed.

And then a small, personal annoyance: every character in this book is around 17 or 18 years old - yet apparently all know exactly what they want in a romantic partner. Some don't like bi-girls, others don't like girls that are too butch or too femme, some like a girl who takes control in bed and others don't. It had me sitting there wondering if I was the only person who hadn't even figured out that she liked men and women by the time she was 18 (Laura isn't really struggling with this issue - she knows she likes girls, she just wants to like boys instead). There was lots of black and white in this book, even when so many of the characters hated labels being applied to themselves, they were willing to judge one another by relatively inflexible standards.

I really feel like literature of gay teens has come a long way since books like Annie on My Mind - a classic and important book, but the quintessential "problem" novel where the two girls face mostly heartache because of their sexual orientation. We need more books like my favorite Empress of the World - a romance where the two romantic leads just happen to be girls. The biggest angst in that one is Nic trying to figure out how she can like a girl when previously she's liked boys. She doesn't think it's weird or wrong that she likes Battle, it's just confusing. Even better will be when books more like Another Kind of Cowboy become the norm. There's still a lot of focus on Alex's sexuality in this one, but there's also a plot outside of romance or sexuality, the world of competitive dressage. When gay characters can appear beside straight characters in stories that aren't about being gay, then we'll know we've reached some sort of equality. At this point, while racial diversity is certainly important and all people should see themselves represented in some way in literature, this one doesn't feel like its advancing much of a cause between the simplistic plot and overall poor writing.

Review: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

Finally, a novel about the not-too-distant-future that rings frighteningly true! So many stories that take our current attitudes to their "logical" conclusion, really seem to focus on only one small part of our attitudes, ignoring how other parts of our national psyche might affect each other (I'm looking at you, Rash). In Little Brother, Cory Doctorow doesn't take our ideas about security to their logical conclusion, but rather to the logical next step, examining what happens in the aftermath of the next big terrorist attack in the United States.

Marcus is a 17 year old hacker living in the Bay Area of California. He's not one of those evil hackers one hears about, sending out viruses and stealing sensitive information; rather he hacks in order to make his overly-observed life more bearable. He hacks the school computers so he can IM during class, he knows how to disable tracking software in library books, and can avoid detection by the gait sensing software used by the school (it's charmingly low tech: put gravel in your shoe and you're untraceable by this "high tech" security).

Marcus has just used his hacking skills to break himself and his best friend, Darryl, out of school in order to participate in their favorite Alternate Reality Game with two of their friends Jolu and Van, students at other local schools, when the ground begins to slip out from under them like an earthquake, and air raid sirens begin to sound. In their panic to find safety, Darryl is injured, and Marcus steps out in front of the next vehicle he sees in order to get someone to stop and help his friend. "Help," however, is now in the guise of the Department of Homeland Security, who now view Marcus and his friends as potential enemy combatants and suspects in the bombing of the Bay Bridge.

After days of detainment and interrogation, Marcus, Jolu and Van are released into a new world with new security everywhere: video cameras are at the front of classrooms, passes for the subway and toll booths have RFID tags that are traced constantly (even when the user isn't near a subway or toll booth) to detect suspicious movements, and even Marcus' personal laptop has been bugged with a keylogger to track his every digital movement. So Marcus begins his own personal crusade to evade the all seeing eyes of the DHS. It starts by hacking an Xbox to run Linux, but grows to jamming the RFID chips, fighting with his parents, gaining a better understanding of the bill of rights and hippies, and finding an awesome girlfriend (who is all the more awesome because her name is Ange).

The book got a little talky at times, with paragraphs, or even pages, dedicated to explaining everything from the yippies to LARPing (note to Marcus: people who play in the basement are infinitely cooler than LARPers ;-) Though I agree people who are painting miniatures take nerdiness to a new level. I say this with all the love in the world, people!). However, a lot of the technical explanation was necessary - all of the technology Marcus experiences and hacks is readily available (and used) today, but unfortunately too many people don't understand what it means (or could mean) to have a Radio Frequency Identification tag broadcasting you whereabouts to anyone who inquires. Rarely does the exposition stop the action, however, and overall I felt it added a lot of credibility to the book. Additionally there are two afterwards to the book that added to the credibility: one from a security technologist and another from Andrew "bunnie" Huang, the first to hack the original Xbox, and on top of that a bibliography that covers practically every topic brought up in the book for further reading.

Ultimately this book works because it's not hard to imagine ending up here. Various organizations are constantly fighting to add more surveillance/security equipment into public places in order to protect us. But are we actually any safer for it? When cameras are placed in the front of classrooms, Marcus openly asks how on earth that is going to protect the students from terrorists - if a terrorist came in with a bomb, the camera certainly wasn't going to stop him.

I absolutely loved Marcus' interactions with his parents following his return home from his interrogation. After being threatened by the DHS if he tells anyone where he was for five days, Marcus concocts a story about his friends and himself being trapped while out camping - an experience many people did have. His father, meanwhile, is a different person upon Marcus' return. He had spent five days convinced his son was dead, perhaps buried at the bottom for the bay under the rubble of the bombed bridge. He seems to be pretty okay with the increased surveillance - even after he is stopped twice on the way home from work one day to be questioned by police about his movements. He truly believes that if the security will prevent another attack, if the security will keep his son safe, then his privacy is a small price to pay. Marcus, obviously, feels completely differently and makes impassioned arguments to his dad. These arguments reminded me of many a conversation with my own parents, both as a teenager and today, since on most issues we are miles apart in our views. The idea that a teenager is just too young to understand, and their opinion will change (to the correct view of her or his parents) in time will be familiar to many readers.

Review: Audrey, Wait by Robin Benway

When Audrey decides to break up with her aspiring-rockstar boyfriend, Evan, she doesn't think anything big will come of it. Girls and boys break up all the time, after all. As she's leaving him and he calls out "Audrey, wait!" she keeps walking - unaware that she was about to inspire the country's Next Big Song.

Evan turns the break up into his band's break out song. As they start jetsetting around the world, Audrey finds her small world - which extends to school, working at an ice cream shop, and going to as many awesome concerts as she can make it to - suddenly invaded by the paparazzi and crazy fans. While at first her newfound celebrity affords her some awesome opportunities - hello VIP backstage passes! - it also has a number of downsides: paparazzi photos of her sleeping in class and blog posts calling her ugly are just the beginning.

While Evan has made her an instant celebrity, Audrey just wants to continue on with life as usual: going to concerts with her best friend, finding a new boyfriend, and studying for the SAT. But as it becomes clear that life, at least for as long as "Audrey, Wait!" is on the Billboard top 100 charts, will be anything but normal, how will Audrey, her family and, most importantly, her friends handle the change?

I thought this was a great read overall. For the first few chapters Audrey's voice and slang kind of grated on me - it came across as the author trying too hard to be young and hip. But eventually the story became so engrossing that I hardly noticed it for the last half of the book.

There were some plot points that were obvious from a mile away, but it was still enjoyable to see how the plot got to that point.

Audrey is a very smart young woman, who knows how to take care of herself. Sure she makes some dumb moves sometimes (giving sarcastic interviews to journalists, for example), but at the important times she does the smart thing. When a pair of creepy wanna-be musicians show up at her door and try to steal a kiss so Audrey can become the inspiration for their next song, she holds her composure and tells them to scram. Additionally, Audrey isn't afraid of showing she's book-smart either; throughout the book she's pointing out the SAT and PSAT words she keeps using. It's a small addition, but I love it when books aren't afraid to blatantly show that their female characters are academically smart.

Also awesome: Robin Benway is one of the few authors I've seen who actually seems to get how text messaging/IM/message boards/blogs all work. And yet her characters are smart enough that when we see IM conversations it's not all "lol i c u l8r." They use a realistic combination of full sentences and some shorthand (for example, Audrey says over IM at one point "got 2 go, dinner"). It's such a small thing, but the internet has been such a major part of my life for so long that it's just jarring to me when people don't get it (Audrey at one point mentions her parents don't understand how she can talk on the phone, IM and e-mail all at once and she doesn't understand how they can't. I can't do quite all of that at once, but my parents sure don't understand how I manage to type as fast as I do, or understand why someone might text rather than call someone).

Ultimately, this is one of those books I found impossible to put down. I read it over the course of an evening, on the subway and on breaks at work, and found it a quick and very fun read.