So closed a year of reading and writing. A year of no school to speak of. A year of figuring myself out. When I found the Eclectic Reader's challenge last January, hosted by Book'd Out, it seemed like the perfect way to help myself transition into life and learning on my own. I've always loved to read, it was always my favorite part of school, so this challenge presented me with a framework for continuing that love while trying to move it into a new phase. And it worked wonders. I read so many books this year, so many different types of books, books that I bought just or this purpose, but also books that had once appealed to me into purchase and then languished on my shelf for "free time" to come around and remind me to read something just for me--a rare occurrence. Others were recommendations from friends, some were chosen purely for their blurb and an impulse at a new bookstore. I tried to find something that fit each of my assigned categories but also would give something back to me as well. I learned a lot this year, and here I'm gonna try to figure out what.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
January - fiction into film
I didn't read this in middle school like the rest of the world, and I think coming to it through older eyes changed the way I related to Charlie. I saw him through the eyes of someone who had already been through high school and left those friend behind, made those choices and loved those people. I think it was helpful for me to read about his transition as I was going through my own, leaving a different sort of school and striking out on my own; even though I still had my friends around me, I felt alone a lot. Charlie being able to find Sam again when she came back helped me realize that it isn't the end of an era, just a widening out.
Zorro by Isabel Allende
February - translated fiction
I have loved Isabel Allende since I first read House of the Spirits when I was twelve years old. The mysticism in her voice and the idea of magical realism captured my attention from the very first pages, and she has also strengthened my love for Spanish. Zorro was an opportunity for me to read a different kind of book by her, a story that came with baggage she did not create but used expertly all the same. It was a chance for me to revisit an old friend and experience it a different way, something I love to do and have done for many of my favorite stories like hansel & gretel and beauty and the beast.
Drawing in the Dust by Zoe Klein
March - romantic suspense
This book caught my eye because it was about Israel, a country I know and love. It was interesting--if a little jarring--to see her through the eyes of a Christian woman, and I was surprised at myself for being surprised that I could relate. I saw my religion from the outside for the first time in a long time, and it was still beautiful to me.
John Dies At The End by David Wong
April - urban fantasy
This was my first official recommendation. My boyfriend's best friend Cam had me watch the new movie version of this weird-ass story and told me that they only tell about a third of it on screen, I was intrigued. These people felt real, raw, ridiculous in the best sense of the word, and I loved every weird, disjointed page of this book. So much so that I bought the sequel IN HARDCOVER, something I rarely do, but I couldn't wait to read it.
The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan
May - published in 2013
I love Degas. He has been my favorite artist since I was little, and I have always been unspeakably moved by his paintings, though I can't remember what exactly brought me to him. So reading about the girl who was a model for his famous statue was like bringing history to life for me. For a long time I wanted to write historical fiction like this, to find stories untold in the pages of a textbook and give them voices. This book reawakened that desire in me.
Suck It, Wonder Woman! by Olivia Munn
June - memoir
I really wanted to like this book more than I did. I just had too many problems with Olivia Munn by the end of it. I didn't like some of her choices of anecdotes and how she didn't take her examination or her anger far enough, just putting it out there to bake under the heat of the public's invited rage. Maybe if she had written it more recently, during her stint as the amazing Sloan Sabbith on The Newsroom her voice would've changed a little bit. But I needed more from her, and I didn't get it.
Dracula, the Undead by Ian Holt and Dacre Stoker
July - action adventure
I fucking love Dracula. I have read countless vampire books and watched so many movie iterations and seen the lore translated in so many ways, so getting something by an actual Stoker sounded amazing. I think my favorite part, though, was the analysis at the end, where the coauthors explained their intent ad plan for the story.
The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez Reverte
August - historical mystery
Ahh historical mystery. I love this genre. I also love books like this that delve into real authors and their stories, like The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl. I love seeing parts of history in a different way, and this book had so many opportunities for that. So many mysteries, my only problem was that sometimes I wouldn't catch on and the chapter would end with a cryptic revelation that I didn't quite get and it frustrated me. There was so much going on that I didn't know what my brain was supposed to latch into.
The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon
September - dystopia
This book was an impulse buy. I had been considering reading Ender's Game for this month's book, but decided to do some research and find a new world of my own. I was drawn to this book because it is written by a 22 year old woman, and I wanted it to serve as a sort of inspiration to me, that I should keep writing and get my story out there like this girl did. Plus she made up a lot of words and had a glossary in the back and I'm a sucker for that shit.
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon
October - LGBTQ
This book was recommended to me by one of my favorite literary critics and beautiful minds: my friend Olivia. We were tipsily walking to a bar one night to meet our friends, talking about literature (like you do) and she was asking about my challenge and if I had the next book picked out. I told her I had some ideas for this month but wasn't sure and she pretty much shot all of them down and told me I had to read this. That it is one of her favorite books of all time and it will mean so much to me because we're so similar. I'm so glad I did. It was inspirational in that it was an amazing author's first attempt at writing, and the story itself was also about first attempts, about the transition that I'm going through, from college to the new world, and even though the specifics are different, the feelings of recklessness and dislocation rang true.
How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran
November - humor
I'm gonna be honest, I really liked her name (spelled the same as mine, *ahem*) and the title and every blurb I read said it sounded funny, and I am in fact figuring out how to be a woman, so this book was a pretty easy decision. Caitlin Moran took me with her as she remembered her process of How To Be A Woman, and every anecdote held some kernel of reassurance for me, and her incredible candor allowed me to delve into topics I haven't quite allowed myself to think about deeply before.
Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan
December - new adult
Critics have called this chick lit and berated it for its vagueness and flat characters, but I did enjoy this book. It's not really that surprising how many of the books I chose this year were about some great change in an individual's life, most mirroring the changes I am going through right now, but what is surprising is the incredible range of decisions those individuals made, most specifically in this book. The four protagonists in Commencement almost spoke to four different parts of me, as a woman, as a feminist, as a new adult making her way in the world, as one half of a serious relationship. No matter the vagueness or the flat characters (and I'm not denying those claims their validity), this book was a perfect way for me to round out a year of eclectic reading because it gave me a backdrop to think about what I really want to do--what I really could do--with this new life that has presented itself to me.
Throughout the course of this year, I have also learned a lot about writing. Forcing myself to reflect on something and write about it every month made me look at how I form my own opinions about things. For example, I read a lot of other reviews when I was writing about each book, and it took a while for me to realize that that wasn't always productive. Sure, getting ideas from other sources' opinions is fine, but I need to be confident enough in my own to not shrink back from opposition or think that what I originally felt about a book was wrong. Because feelings aren't wrong. Responses to the way a certain text talks to you are instinct and speak to your personal emotional makeup at the time. I suppose this translates to pretty much anything anyone could have an opinion about in the entire world, but as with a lot of things in my life, it took reading to bring it out. So this year, I plan to give myself more time. More time alone with a feeling before posting about it or discussing it or analyzing it. I want to know in detail what something means to me, how it fits into my personal worldview, before I put it out on the chopping block to get ripped apart. Because there's nothing worse than turning around and beating yourself up for your own opinions, rather than allowing them to be strong for you. So thanks, 2013, for helping me remember how to think for myself, and here's to 2014 for showing me the strength to do so.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Saturday, December 21, 2013
DEC - Commencement
December review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan, 2009. [New Adult category]
Commencement by J Courtney Sullivan is just that: a commencement. A beginning that, like life, once begun cannot be paused or made to wait for you. It picks you up and wraps you into the lives of four young women during their days at Smith College, and the intricacies of each story keep the pages turning. Sally, Celia, Bree, and April are very different in their first days at Smith, but we follow as they move toward each other, learning about themselves and about life as a woman along the way. Sullivan deals with dark topics such as rape, child prostitution and nascent feminism as the girls make their way through their years in Smith's bubble and then ripple out into their own worlds. For all its vague character development and surface-scratching of aforementioned issues, I couldn't stop reading. It was one of two possible titles for my "new adult" category, the one I started reading second, but the first very soon fell by the wayside as I stayed up later and later in my hotel room over Thanksgiving to read Commencement, while College Girl languished with a bookmark barely past the first chapter and the meeting of the strangely friendly boy who will obviously bring eponymous heroine out of her young adult shell. (Boring.) I enjoyed my final decision much more.
As a word nerd, the very first thing I loved about this book was the play on the title; the word "commencement" as a reference to the college graduation ceremony, but also to the start of a new life, a new chapter. This novel perfectly straddled that double meaning, especially through the use of memories dislocated in time. We are never quite sure if what we are experiencing is in the present until the end of the book, when the old memories get fewer and farther between. Sullivan pulled off a book about four girls' realigning relationships that also comments on the absurdity of some of life's vicissitudes, especially those facing young women. Sure her characters are white women from varying degrees of the upper-middle class, and there are times when Sullivan presents their feminism as if it is the only brand that exists, but I think that she did a good job for what this book was trying to be. And that's the thing about feminist endeavors lately: it seems to me that we as a culture have become so hypercritical and obsessed with a political correctness that ends in sanitization of anything real that whenever anyone tries to make a dent, however small, in such a complex topic, if they don't pull it off perfectly and without anything that could possibly be construed as offensive to someone else, we attack them. When really we should be applauding their attempt to do something about anything, to keep the ball rolling even if it gets picked up and hurled back in their face (read: Lily Allen and her "Hard Out Here" video).
In terms of the category of the month, I originally wasn't positive this book would fit. I mean, it fit by my understanding of the definition (New Adult is a category with protagonists age 18-25 learning about their world and how to transition in it), but this particular book wasn't on any "delineated "New Adult" list per se, so I took a few liberties. When I was searching, most of the "new adult" category seemed to be sexed-up half-naked 19 year olds on the covers going to college and (possibly) being magical and just generally angsting about things for sequels on sequels on sequels. (Aside--Hell yeah I'm judging books by their covers, and I'm super glad I did so. Fight about it.) As a young twentysomething moving through the commencement of my own strange life, I felt that this second wave of "New Adult" (the college/post-college subjects) was more fitted to my sensibilities. I mentioned Commencement wasn't on any Goodreads lists or the New Adult fiction wikipedia page et cetera, I used my literary discretion to find a book that I thought fit the category but would also give me something in return, a practice I have tried to use all year. There is talk amongst The Critics, that amorphous blob of humanity that makes up most of my knowledge about new books, that this category is purely a fad, a marketing technique to differentiate Skyler Gray from Percy Jackson, and while this is a valid point, I think this category will last. I think people will always be looking to find books that mirror their own life, and having more and more specific subcategories (teen paranormal romance, anyone?) will help people on their quest. I enjoyed Commencement even though I didn't go to a womens college or go undercover to bring awareness to child prostitution rings or have an affair with my professor, and it was because it was about girls in the same mindset as me, trying to figure out what a big ticket education and all the possibility in the world is going to get me.
Saturday, November 30, 2013
NOV - How To Be a Woman
November review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: How To Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran, 2011. [Humor category]
How To Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran has been on my radar for a while, and not only because she spells her name like I do (but pronounces it differently. cuz she's british). I have been interested in her comparison to Tina Fey, her cavalier and funny choice of title, and just her general super-coolness that I really really want to find the secret recipe for. I mean, she's worked as a writer basically since she could legally collect her own paycheck, and that is something I have sort of always been afraid of--even though it's the thing I want most in this world. So when I had the idea to pick her first book for the humor category in my year-long romp through literature, I jumped at the chance.
This memoir-slash-manifesto was everything I thought it was going to be and more. Every self-deprecating chapter ("Chapter 3: I Don't Know What to Call My Breasts!" or "Chapter 7: I Encounter Some Sexism!") is a mixture of funny anecdotes from Moran's childhood which effortlessly transition into greater musings about the chapter's relation to feminism or the female place in the world at large. While her tone is pretty flippant at times, with LOTS OF CAPS LOCK, she manages to sound incredibly down-to-earth and friendly at the same time. She has this new idea about not a new way to think about feminism, not as another wave but rather as an incoming tide--because around the fifth wave of anything it doesn't appear to be individual anything anymore, and that's when things get interesting. She talks about sweating the small stuff, making a big deal about the minuscule things because one broken window going unfixed will lead to more and more vandals and squatters and all kinds of ill-mannered folk wreaking havoc on what was once just a nice building quietly minding its own business. A lot of things she says I agree with, a lot of the gray areas she points out. I read an article recently about women dealing with misogynist culture and being told to just lighten up' and smiling but inside feeling like "if you lighten up anymore you're going to float the fuck away." Caitlin Moran has a lot of the same feelings as the author of said article, Roxane Gay, does, and this sort of call to arms for women, this assurance that fighting against this shit doesn't make you a militant freak or a social outcast, is what really drew me home into this book.
At one point, Moran talks about strong female role models (Chapter 14), mostly recording artists--because that is where she got her start--and mentions a whole slew of them, including Lily Allen ("a gobby ingénue!"). Now, I was reading this book at about the time the whole "Hard Out Here"/Lily Allen-is-a-racist fiasco. 2013 was a really weird year for women, what with the vomit-inducing Robin Thicke and the parodies and the backlash, and the backlash on the backlash, women yelling at other women for speaking their mind even if they fuck up in the way that they do so, and so I was interested in reading a wonderfully belligerent feminist's attempt to make sense of it, and I continued to read Moran's writings after the book was over. I've always thought the idea of intent was a very tricky one, and we talked about it a lot in my lit classes, but I've never really tried to apply it to pop culture or artists making their waves in the present. I think one of the obsessions with authorial intent is that most of the time, the author can't be reached for comment and it allows for endless debate without actually reaching any meaningful conclusion. The thing about intent with living artists is that it gets messy, with revisions and anger and takesie-backsies and she-said-she-said. But that is the difference between the study of the past and the study of the present. And even though it hurts my head (and my OCD) a little bit to be a part of it, I love immersing myself in the mess. I read every article about Lily Allen and her anthem, trying to figure out how I felt versus how I should feel or am allowed to feel. The easiest way for me to line everything up, I felt, was to find something that took a few steps back and spend a moment reflecting upon the sheer ridiculousness of the situation.
And that brings me to speak in terms of the category this month, humor. In all honesty, this book fits "memoir" much more than Olivia Munn's book did, and I think that is mostly because Moran bared more of her soul and allowed us to be more vulnerable with her. But I read it for "humor," why? No bookstore or website I saw ever put it under a "humor" banner, not technically, but she's so funny and these are my rules so whatever. It might be because she's not afraid to denigrate herself, to address her own flaws. She admits freely that humans are inherently imperfect and once you can look back on that without shame, you can see the humor in life.
I loved this book. I found a lot of things Caitlin Moran writes about resonate with me. As a writer, as a woman, as someone with a brain. I wasn't being preached at, I was a co-conspirator, almost. And that's all anyone really wants, I think. To be taught alongside someone else, rather than at the expense of someone else. If this year has taught me anything, it has taught me that.
Other reviews I enjoyed:
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
OCT - The Mysteries of Pittsburgh
October review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon, 1988. [LGBTQ category]
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh was written by Michael Chabon for his MFA program after he finished undergrad in the 80s. Right off the bat I am intrigued because, as a woman recently deluged with wave after tidal wave of First Time, I am curious about his first; I want to feel those first feelings from another creature any time I can, to see how they translate theirs and put it out into the world. There is a familiar sense of "wait, I could do this. . ." as the novel progresses, and that isn't necessarily a bad thing. It keeps the reader grounded and aware of the raw, uncut beauty of this author's first try. Sure it could be better, more polished, more insightful, but these are once again the shortcomings of a newcomer, and they should be acknowledged but made to sit in the back of the room. But I digress.
The Mysteries of Pittsburg is a book of firsts, both in story and in circumstance. It story of a summer after, a new beginning, a reinvention. Art Bechstein, son of a mobster, returns to the library one last time after graduation and there his summer (and subsequently his life) is changed forever. Sounds like the log line of pretty much every summer blockbuster ever, huh? It is exactly this touchstone that situates the reader in comfort, letting them come to the discoveries that crop up alongside Art, gathering as he gathers, feeling as he feels. Chabon's prose is unparalleled, even this early in his career, and I have loved his handling of language ever since I read Summerland when I was 13. Phrases like "solace is in the fabric of sweatshirts" (219) and "I was watching the clock slowly fold up my last ten minutes like the pleats of a fan" (61) drew me in with their simplicity, and I felt at home in the words.
As for a general summary of the book, it is really the story of Art and a few other players, most of whom we don't get to know very well in the short space we're allowed between the covers of the book. There is Phlox, the Girl Behind Bars who entrances him then entraps him with every insistence and arrogance. She is introduced to Art by Arthur, a gay man Art runs into at the library that fateful day, the strong forearm behind the crank of the story. Arthur becomes Art's link to the rest of the major players, Jane and Cleveland, a couple the most defining of whose characteristics seems to be that they are in a relationship and it is dysfunctional. On the fringes are Cleveland's mobster father and other members of the Pittsburgh elite who intersect with either Art or Cleveland in the latter's dabblings with the seedy side toward the end of the book. I am going to say straight out that I hate Phlox. I do not understand her. I realize that it is 1988 and views on gays are radically different from my own in 2013, but I almost cannot reconcile her thinking gay men are disgusting or cowardly (95) with then her apparent embrace of her own sexuality--"But do you know what those Christians told me? They told me I would have to learn to live without sex. I can't live without sex, Art. It's ridiculous. If Jesus really loves me, then He wants me to sleep with boys" (101). On the other hand, Cleveland's outlook on all things gay seems much more in line with the humanistic view I've come to adopt--"So why don't you just let me do what I want, and I'll let you boys do what you want, and maybe that way we can all stay friends" (238). It was nods to these themes that made me pick this book for the LGBTQ genre.
In terms of LGBTQ, Michael Chabon is a singular entity. With the publishing of Mysteries, Chabon was almost rebranded as a gay writer by the critics due to his straightforward, almost playful treatment of gayness and bisexuality. In his P.S. section in a newer edition of the book, Chabon voiced some concerns about how he was labeled, also putting forward his marriage to a woman as a lens to interpret his writing through. I chose this book rather than any of the other popular (read: token) LGBTQ books floating around my environs (read: Middlesex. (No really, everyone I know on this campus has read Middlesex)) because it wasn't proclaiming to be anything, and that ambiguity, that process of discovery, makes this in my view a perfect introduction to a genre/topic that I myself am not particularly familiar with. A fact of which I am very glad because I was able to stumble across this beautiful beautiful line that encapsulates everything I've ever thought about sexuality ever: "you're just clowning around with your sexual chemistry set" (237). Not only does Chabon deal with a single boy developing his possible bisexuality, he almost nonchalantly calls into question the idea of what is feminine as Art observes Arthur's body one day at the pool (164). How do you describe a man's body? What words are charged and why? How can words be so "erotically feminine" without being gendered at any semantic level? I love books that make me ask questions, even if the questions are not themselves present in the text, and Chabon does a brilliant job of just setting something on the table for readers to engage or not, depending on their will.
And speaking of will (pardon my insufferably heavy-handed segue, please), one of the recurring ideas of this book that stuck out to me was the "will to bigness." Art wants it from the first 50 pages, Cleveland gets it in the end, the whole novel is peppered with the desire to be something more than what you are, and I think that it is a phrase that encapsulates the ideas behind this story; a boy's first summer in the real world, an author's first novel, the desire to be something MORE. As a grad almost a year out of school, I can appreciate the will-to-bigness that is so intoxicating: life is hard without the desire to be something bigger, the desire to move forward and toward some new thing. I've spent the past few months trying to figure out the bigness I am striving for, and this monthly book blog has definitely helped me along. So thank you, minuscule number of readers, for sharing this journey with me. Books like this make me feel like my time has been well spent. (p271)
{Like a nerd, one of my favorite things to do is read literary criticism by authors, both about their own works and others floating around in the aether, so here's a link to an article Chabon wrote about his book in The New York Review of Books. So check it out! Maybe we can be nerdfriends.}
Monday, October 21, 2013
Hey! Hey you! Come to our micro horror fest!
Coming soon to the Ugly Mug near you, a miniature version of our Horror Fest!
Wednesday, 26 Oct, 2013
6pm-9pm
Ugly Mug's HORROR FEST 2013!!
For you we will have:
+Film Screening of Three Corpse Circus' Best of the Fest Collection
+Horror Art Showcase
+Costume Contest
+Spooky Snacks
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
You will be missed.
Today, I went into work to find a note that popped up repeatedly throughout the store informing staff of a shattering event: A coworker of ours had committed suicide yesterday morning. The boy in question was a quiet kid, kept to himself, and we weren't friends by any stretch of the word, but I tried to say hi to him every time I let him in in the morning. I felt shook up, like someone had pushed into the record player of my brain, jarring the needle out of its habitual groove. I thought that if I felt this disoriented about the loss of someone I just brushed elbows with occasionally, I cannot begin to fathom the loss of someone closer, someone whose elbows never left yours, someone who saved more than a good morning smile for you.
It seems that I've been faced with death a lot this year. Just a few months ago, my boyfriend's coworker drowned after jumping off a bridge after a party, and I actually had a panic attack and couldn't go into work. The finality of it cut me deep, the internalization of the idea that today something that had once moved, breathed, laughed, texted, just hours before, was simply ended, gone. With little to no explanation. I'm trying to describe the feelings I've been nudging against today, and it's hard, mostly because I think we think about death in such cliché ways that when it finally breaks into our little bubbles, that is the only way we know to respond, with half-baked thousand-times-used phrases that everyone will know. But maybe that's a good thing. Maybe the emptiness of the words lets others know that we feel the same, we have no words as well. I don't know.
Monday, September 30, 2013
SEPT - The Bone Season
September review for the Eclectic Reader's Book Challenge 2013: The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon, 2013. [Dystopia category]
Wiling away the hours in our newest hip bookstore last month, I was trying desperately to find a book that would fit my dystopia category. I went through classics lists on the internet, debated H.G. Wells and Isaac Asimov, but ultimately went outside to sit on the curb, anxious and tomeless, redoubling my internet efforts on my tiny phone screen. On a whim, I had picked up the IndiePicks! newsletter for the month as I was leaving Literati, and I thumbed through it looking for catchwords that might possibly mean "containing post-apocalyptic oppressive society." The stark blue cover of The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon struck me, even in thumbnail form, and as I read through the blurb I became more and more excited about it. Luckily, I hadn't gone but four steps from Literati, so I turned around and walked back inside and on whim, bought a $26-hardcover-new-realease from a 22-year-old British author and walked back out. (There aren't words to explain how rarely I do such a thing. I suffer from a double dose of inherited Jewish stinginess and buyer's anxiety, so such a splurge really spoke to me.) Immediately I sat down and started to read in the sun, hoping for anything to make my soul thrum with excitement again. It had been a while.
At first glance The Bone Season seems to be a typical sci-fi concept, the story of a singular individual built into an oppressive world whose skills make it dangerous for her to be there at all. (One girl in all the world, anyone?) Add some clairvoyance and a little bit of 1984 cross-bred with V For Vendetta and you've pretty much got The Bone Season. Paige Mahoney is a teenage clairvoyant living in 2059 London, a city that is now taken over by the terrifyingly closed-minded Scion (haha clairvoyance pun...sorry guys). Paige is a special kind of clairvoyant called a dreamwalker which essentially allows her spirit to leave her body to interact with the aether around her and even the minds of other people. This rare talent makes her a hot commodity in the rebel underground where she is employed by a rather pompous clairvoyant named Jaxon Hall. Her talent is untrained, though, and when forced into a corner Paige accidentally uses her power and kills two underguards, making her even more Most Wanted than usual. Her attempts to fly under the radar fail and she is captured and taken to what is essentially a concentration camp for her kind, called Sheol 1, built in the ruins of what used to be Oxford, and it is ruled by alien creatures called the Rephaim. Paige, being a special someone, is taken under the command of Warden, the blood consort and one who rarely consorts with humans. Isolated and confused, Paige has to learn to either adapt to this crushing new lifestyle or own her abilities enough to break herself and her newfound friends of the compound, all the while being tormented with gossip of faceless monsters, the Emim, who prowl just outside Sheol 1, snacking on a human limb here and some Rephaim blood there. Most of the story takes place within Sheol 1 and follows Paige's day-to-day traversal of her new life. Though the phraseology at times seemed a little too quaint and the final battle came rather quickly after so many pages of painstakingly detailed mind-jaunts, the novel as a whole was more than satisfying to me, due largely to the snarky female protagonist.
Paige is strong and bullheaded and ultimately very flawed, but her imperfections possibly make it easier for the reader to take her story as something to be heeded. The budding interest between Paige and her captor is interesting but also takes a backseat: it is not the point of the whole frame, as it would be in Twilight or some such work. Some critics have disparaged Paige as too self-absorbed and inconsiderate of others, obsessed with her gift but unwilling to push her limits, but I think the very fact that she has all these problems allow her to be a real human being, not a one-track-mind cyborg (*ahem* Bella) who can do nothing except chase a horribly toxic relationship with a horribly unavailable and dangerous individual. Our Paige is young and she messes up (a lot). She gets angry at Warden (not that he doesn't entirely deserve it) and gets into fights and spins out of control as she flails against the huge dystopian force that is Scion London.
Trying to find a book to read for dystopia was really interesting because it brought up a lot of questions and observations about the genre. Originally, I thought about doing Ender's Game for this month's category, but when I read the internet's thoughts on the matter, it seemed as if Ender was widely not considered dystopic because it takes place during the end of the world as the characters know it, rather than after. I feel that this is an unfairly specific restriction on dystopia because one could argue that it is never really the end of THE world but rather the end of A world. In this respect, I think Ender's Game could've worked nicely but I'm glad I chose The Bone Season because there's something about near-future radical regime shift stories that speaks to me lately. The Bone Season is at its core about exclusion. Parallels can be drawn to Holocaust tropes ("a humane means of removing clairvoyants from ordinary society" p402) or anti-gay propaganda (the pamphlet Jaxon writes is called On The Merits of Unnaturalness) or even vampire stories (at one point Warden drinks Paige's blood to restore him after he rebelliously gets his ass shredded by an Emim, not to mention that the Rephaim sleep during the day). But Shannon does not pedestal any of these threads, does not allow any singular one to become a watchword for her story. In this way, as well, I think it is derivative and silly to compare her to "the next J.K. Rowling." Allow her to be her own phenomenon, should her work deserve it. I myself am looking forward to seeing that it does.
The Bone Season is being hailed as everything from the next J.K. Rowling to the next Stephanie Meyer, and the reader reviews are just as varied. I truly enjoyed this book, thought it was new and full and a good first start. There were of course some failings, it being Shannon's first time out of the gate and all, but I don't think any of the comparisons both critics and publishers are making are fair to her--or anyone's--nascent talent. Being compared to such publishing powerhouses could automatically stunt Shannon's growth under all the pressure such completely different stories unfairly place upon her. To me, there were many things that were inspiring about this book, first and foremost that Samantha Shannon is 22 and published, an beacon of hope to me as an aspiring 22 year old writer who still only writes on her lunch break at the coffee shop. Her main character is a strong young woman who claws her way out of the world that was forced upon her. And her imagination is to die for. Being a lover of words, I was so excited to have a glossary in the back and a hierarchy of (vaguely defined) types of clairvoyants in the front. While many critics raked Shannon across the coals for "info-dumping" and unintelligible language, my heart leapt at the challenge of understanding not only this new world but the way it describes itself. I have been looking for a new world to jump into lately, and I think Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season just might do the trick.
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