MAR - Graceling

March review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2015: Graceling by Kristin Cashore, 2008. [YA Adventure category]

Graceling by Kristin Cashore was recommended to me by my brother years ago, as I recall. Because my bookshelves are getting very full and my pockets a little emptier, I have made it a goal to endeavor to use only books that I've purchased already for this challenge in an attempt to read through my eternally growing To Be Read list. Graceling is my YA adventure book for the year, beating out others like Insurgent because I thought it was standalone, but upon further inspection I have found that it is not. (Discussion of why many genres are chock full of series stretched to the bone is for another time and place, however.) This book follows Katsa of the Middluns, Graced with killing and forced to be a thug for her uncle the king. It describes Katsa's subversive endeavor, known as The Council, that is slowly spreading across the Seven Kingdoms in opposition to some of the mercilessness and horror enacted by the kings across the land. We follow Katsa as she rescues a member of Lienid royalty and later befriends the Lienid's grandson, who is also Graced and understands (to a degree) what it is like to see the world differently and be seen differently by the world. Friendship like this is something Katsa never considered for her life, so total is her self deprecation and loathing, and through her relationship with Po (whose real name is Greening Grandemalion, but we'll get to that weirdness later), she learns more about herself, her powers, and her world than she ever thought possible.

Without going into too much detail, the inciting action of the story is when Katsa realizes she has more control over her destiny than she thought, and she separates herself from her king uncle, setting off on a quest with Po to find a truth hidden far away. This truth turns out to be something that Katsa cannot defend herself from, an entirely novel concept to her as she is wholly used to being invincible and in total control of her faculties, due to her Grace, and it is possibly this realization of human weakness that opens her up to the humanity she thought was quashed by her Grace, by the monster she thought her grace had made her into. By admitting that she was not capable of protecting herself under the influence of this truth, Katsa learns to allow herself to rely on other people, and even open herself up to maybe loving someone. This story is one of capability and how one copes with something (or someone) that robs one of their capability, and how to deal with it, grow, and move on. It is a story that grows to understand happiness not as something alien and unreachable and strictly qualified, but something that is amorphous and moldable to each individual's worldview, something that each individual deserves a chance at. Katsa comes into her own over the course of this book, and the text itself often attempts to address larger issues through the foil of its fantasy framework, which I will discuss further.

A number of reviews I glanced at of this book condemned it as a vapid, bullheaded attempt to capitalized on YA adventure and coming of age novels, and while some of the reviews made some salient points, I would not go so far as to condemn this book entirely. Sure, Graceling is a simplistic book, almost fluff in its readability, one that has jarring naming conventions and less-than-realistic portrayals of 10-year-old dialogue, but as I mentioned, it does attempt to address some bigger issues, which is impressive for an author's debut in such a fraught genre. Cashore attempts to bring up prejudice, gossip, societal conventions, femininity, and numerous other themes in terms of the world she has built here, and many of them are well-thought out and intentioned, if not entirely mature or high-flown in their execution. For example (IMPORTANT NOTE: SPOILERS FOLLOW), toward the middle of the novel it is revealed that King Leck of Monsea may in fact be Graced himself, with what amounts to a gossip Grace, or the ability to control what people think of him and how they act toward him simply through the power of his own words. The interesting thing about this, I thought, is that the Grace retains its strength once the words leave Leck's immediate conversational purview: things that are said about him, however far away, carry this heady manipulation, as long as it is an idea or a story that he originally spread. This differs from many mind-control powers that I have come across throughout my reading in this way, and I was heavily intrigued by the direct parallel I saw with the idea of influential but misinformed gossip. Something as intangible as a person's words and influence completely decimate the unilateral capability that Katsa is built upon, reinforcing the idea that words have a weight that can disarm as well as any fighting move, and many cannot be countered once given their own life.

Such discussion of words brings me to my next point of interest for Graceling. I mentioned the naming conventions earlier, particularly in reference to the Prince Po, or Greening Grandemalion, because that is one of the most ridiculous names I've ever come across and I've read A LOT of YA fantasy. There is a king named Thigpen, reading which I can only ever picture Pig Pen from the movie Out Cold, so that's sort of ridiculous too. But not all the naming conventions I noted were ridiculous. King Ror of Lienid is loud. The names of the Seven Kingdoms are interesting in that they are very directionally-based (Nander is the northernmost, Estill is to the East, Wester is to the west, Sunder is south, Middluns is in the middle), except for the two outlying ones that care little for the drama of the other five and which play more of a role in the story (Lienid, which is an island to the southwest of the mainland, and Monsea which is attached to the mainland on the southeast border of Sunder and Estill). A huge part of world building for tales such as these relies on organic naming conventions, and I believe Cashore stumbles a little with this, as many times the evocations brought about by a name for me weren't necessarily connotations or other bits that would fill out and develop the word and its place in the world, but rather arrest my disbelief and take me away from the story Cashore is so earnestly trying to weave.

Finally, I'd like to touch on the feminism of the book. Most obviously, this book is an adventure with a Strong Female Character (and a physically strong one at that), but it also allows her to be strong in her imperfections. Katsa is constantly re-discovering and re-analyzing things she thought she knew, about herself and about the world, particularly in her attempt to reconcile her love for Po and her abhorrence of marriage, of her discovery of a possible gray area in which she could find an answer to the question "Could she be his lover and still belong to herself?" (page 234). Not that I'm saying that a SFC must be a rebel or unconventional in order to fit the bill, but rather that she must be allowed to think about these things for herself without judgement from author or story. I have read countless essays picking apart these ideas, from an essay on Trinity Syndrome by Tasha Robinson to an essay on the conflation of "strong" and "perfect" characters by Tom Gauld, and I'm currently reading a book called "How To Be A Heroine" by Samantha Ellis that actually discusses these ideas in terms of the literary heroines the author had growing up. As a woman writer, I feel that these are subjects that I am constantly re-evaluating in my head both as a consumer and as a producer of content, and I appreciate the way that Graceling has contributed to the dialogue.

FEB - Let The Right One In

February review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2015: Let The Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist, 2004. [set in a country starting with S category - Sweden]

This month's category is "set in a country starting with S," appearing easy enough, and right off the bat I probably would've picked Spain because I'm obsessed with Spain, but I picked this book up shortly after seeing the film and it's been on my vampire shelf (yes, I have a section of a shelf for vampire stuff, and no Twilight is not on it) taunting me. And conveniently, the fact that it was set in Sweden caused this book to be a perfect fit for this month. I haven't read many books about Sweden, save the Stieg Larsson books, and I thoroughly enjoyed venturing into a country I didn't know much about. The streets and towns and shorthands were unknown to me, allowing me to immerse myself a little more fully in the story. The prologue began after the events of the story took place, and they whisked you back effectively enough to merit the hungry turning of every page.

The book is divided up in days, stretching from October 21 to November 13, detailing events taking place in Blackeberg, a suburb of Stockholm, in Sweden. The point of view is omniscient, moving from different characters, their stories slowly seeping together over the course of nearly a month of interactions in a small town. Lindqvist is excellent at character development, allowing us at least a sliver of each one's interior monologue, enough to get us to remember them as the tale weaves on. The main plotline follows Oskar, a pre-teen boy growing up with his divorced mother in a small Swedish town, a boy who is bullied constantly and viciously every day by kids at school. He meets a mysterious girl next door, Eli, who is barefoot and seems entirely nocturnal, and they strike up an unlikely friendship. Eli's counterpart is a pedophiliac (human) father-figure named Håkan, who serves her in terms of acquiring sustenance and maintaining their house. With Håkan we come across a number of topics that were excised almost completely from the film adaptations like pedophilia, child rape, and child prostitution. Such themes are only a few of the uncomfortable topics that Lindqvist deals with in the text, perhaps in an effort to never allow any reprieve from the discomfort associated with his story.

One review I read of the book called it "unrelentingly grim," which I completely agree with. There are some moments where the unrelenting grimness sort of falls away, but these are few and far between. The beauty of this book is that it spans terrors from the supernatural (vampires) to the everyday (bullying), and it treats them with equal weight. For example, Lindqvist describes Oskar's rage at being bullied and his thoughts of vengeance and violence, sometimes tending even toward murderous thoughts, and he allows Oskar to feel these things and describe them to us without demonizing him. In the same way, he describes Eli and her situation with a vagueness that belies the secrecy of their person, but also does not make many judgments on them, beyond those that are put forth by Oskar himself. All in all, Oskar and Eli each represent a sort of childhood neglect and outsider status that transcends their differing situations. Oskar is living with his divorced mother, his father having left earlier in his life, taking with him the only sort of male role model he can turn to--and even this role model disintegrates throughout the story. Oskar is overweight, odd, and easy to pick on, and the boys at his school do so relentlessly. Oskar is aware of the game he is embroiled in, the role he must play, and his only solace is clipping violent news articles and pasting them into his scrapbook, imagining himself as the perpetrator of these crimes. Eli, in their own way, has been forced into outsider status by their very nature, the history of which is slowly revealed to us as it is to Oskar. There are physical signs of Eli's neglect, from their ratty pink sweater to their bare feet and strange smell.

I don't think the word "vampire" is used to describe what Eli is until very very late in the book, but it is pretty clear from the beginning what the pieces are adding up to. I may say that because I've seen both movie versions, and that might have colored my reading of the story to some extent, and also my vampire radar is pretty great. If only they were real....*sigh*. In any case, the vampiric aspect of this tale is one I particularly enjoyed. There are a number of vampire lore tropes that were played with here. Needing permission to enter, tears of blood, pain when exposed to sunlight, the list goes on. One that I was particularly interested in is one that Eli uses a number of times to share her past with Oskar: they share a kiss, and Oskar can immediately see through eyes that are not his, experience things that have not happened to him, things that took place many years before.

The book ends with the same detached tone as it began, an epilogue describing the situation from the outside once again. There is still a sense of ominous foreboding that wafts around Eli's other-ness. I find it interesting that the text ends with an actual outsider to the story, as most of the characters have been societal outsiders in their own way, in addition to Oskar and Eli. There are the drunks who frequent the Chinese restaurant. Håkan as a pedophile. Tommy as an addict. Everyone we are introduced to has a darkness within them, and other reviewers have argued that this makes it difficult for the reader to remain engaged as there is no sympathetic outlet, but I enjoyed it. Not in a sadistic way, just in terms of the overarching feel of the story. Let The Right One In is most certainly a depressing and uncomfortable story, but the eloquence of the writer and characters are more than worth the skin-prickling that accompanies it.

JAN - The Secret Life of Bees

January review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2015: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, 2002. [Diversity category]

The Secret Life of Bees has been on my bookshelf for some time now. The title had always intrigued me, as had the cover art (two things that I am known to succumb to when making decisions, never mind the old adage), but I'd never quite gotten around to reading it. I read a memoir of Kidd's, Traveling With Pomegranates, in which she described her quest to write this book as well as the way thinking and writing about the Black Madonna had changed her. So when the Diversity category came around, I figured this was as good a time as any to read it. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd details the story of Lily Owens, a fourteen-year-old white girl in South Carolina who breaks her black "stand-in-mother," Rosaleen, out of jail after witnessing some of the most raw prejudice in her short life. The two go on the run, fleeing from Lily's abusive father and the racist town that put Rosaleen in jail and then let the men who attacked her come into her jail cell after hours to try to finish the job. All they have to go on is a cardboard cutout of the Black Madonna that once belonged to Lily's mother, with the words "Tiburon, S.C." scrawled on the back. When they reach Tiburon, Lily catches sight of a honey jar bearing the very same Black Madonna that she carries with her, and inquiries lead her to August Boatwright, owner and beekeeper of Black Madonna Honey, and also the keeper of a number of secrets that could help Lily figure out her past and the mother she barely remembers. Rosaleen and Lily are invited to stay with the Boatwright sisters--there are three, August, June and May--and thus begins each woman's journey to reestablish herself, and heal the scars of her past.

Sometimes it was a little difficult for me to remember that Lily was supposed to be fourteen; her tone was very simplistic, and seemed like someone much younger at times, especially when talking about her mother. She lived in such a black-and-white space when it came to the woman who had died when she was very young, a space that pitted her against her abusive father (who albeit was pretty terrible, but got a little bit of growth in the end) and would not hear anything against her mother. Lily has a vague memory of the day her mother died, of her parents yelling and a gun falling to the ground, her touching it and then a sudden bang. The circumstances of this day are hazy to Lily an she never questions the reasons behind the scene until she has been at the Boatwrights' (also called "the pink house" because of its garish coloring) for a few months. In a lot of ways, this book is about Lily's journey into her own past, her connection with her mother, but I also believe that it is about Lily's journey into herself and her manner of thinking. She is forced to come to terms with a great many ugly truths throughout the course of the novel, from Rosaleen's arrest to Lily's inability to touch the boy that she is falling in love with in public because of the contrasts in their skin tone, from her mother's death to her father's pain and the fact that he was the one who stayed. Lily deals with a lot during her summer in the honey house, the house across the yard from the pink house where the honey is packaged and where she sleeps in a room of her own. This is very much a coming-of-age tale for Lily, from her departure from her hometown and T.Ray and peaches and kneeling on grits to her stubbornness in not leaving Tiburon at the end of the novel. Not only does she find herself, but she also finds a place to be herself, a circle of women who help nurture her and help her grow into the woman she is meant to be.

One of the discussion questions in the back of my copy of Secret Life asks if the reader thinks that there is a "queen bee" in the novel, and if so, who is it? There are a number of options, but I'm not entirely convinced that there is only one answer. August Boatwright is an obvious choice: she is the leader of the sisterhood in Tiburon that worships the Black Madonna, she is the eldest of the sisters, the owner of the honey company and the overseer of the house. The less obvious choice, and one that I believe holds a lot of weight, is that the Black Madonna is the queen bee of the story. It is difficult to put into words what she did for me over the course of my reading, but she surely had an impact, a strength that came through Kidd's words and Lily's descriptions that resonated with me in a way that I was not entirely familiar with. But for Lily, the Black Madonna brings her to Tiburon, introduces her to August, shows her an entire new circle of mothers in the Daughters of Mary. She helps her to find herself, helps each woman in the honey house in her own way. She is unassuming, but at the same time commanding, her outstretched fist a testament to hard work and standing upright. She is most certainly the queen bee of this story. And in her own way, she inspires the women who worship her, the women who tell the story of Our Lady of Chains, to become her own queen bee, to find a little bit of her in every aspect of themselves and the world around them. As August tells Lily, "Our Lady is not some magical being out there somewhere, like a fairy godmother. She's not the statue in the parlor. She's something inside of you. [...] You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside." Part of coming-of-age is finding strength inside of yourself, and relying on your self, and I think Sue Monk Kidd does an incredible job of translating that to the page here.

Finally, another part of this book that spoke to me was Lily's discovery of writing. Zach gives her a notebook and encourages her to just write. She starts to set down everything that happens to her, and says, "Words streamed out of me so fast I couldn't keep up with them, and that's all I was thinking about." (p289) My goal for this year is to not let my writing fall by the wayside with everything else I am doing, as it has the past few months. I am aiming to make time for myself consistently for writing, and I'm aiming to get my reviews done on time! (Starting next month, I promise!)

Recap 2014: A Second Year of Eclectic Reading

It's hard to believe I've finished another year of this challenge. That means I've been out of college for two years. This year, 2014, has been stellar for me. In January, I started my new job as a technical writer for an immigration law firm where I still work. In March, I tried and fell in love with roller derby, and I am now an alternate for the B team in our league (hoping to be full B Team member by February!). In August I moved in with my best friend in admittedly the smallest of living spaces and most dubious of neighborhoods so far, but it's still lovely. In November I finally completed NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), writing over 50,000 words in 30 days, a feat that I am still supremely proud of, even though the story is nowhere near over. A few weeks ago (I know, I know, not 2015, but still!) I went snowboarding with my amazing boyfriend and actually started to get good, throwing my body into new things and moves possibly more intensely because of all that I have learned in derby (I am no longer afraid of falling. Except for off ski lifts. Those things are intoxicating and terrifying all at the same time). Needless to say I've felt pretty good all throughout this year. And that goodness has been augmented by the books I've read this year. Obviously I read more than just these twelve books, but these were the ones I picked for this particular endeavor, and if I tried to write about every single book I read, I don't think I'd get anything done or ever leave my desk! So here goes, a wrap-up of 2014 in books. Enjoy!
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
January - gothic fiction
I kicked off January in much the same way I did last year: with a book that was the source material for a movie I'd already seen. Prior to this, I hadn't really "read" much horror, other than some Stephen King (which I loved, obviously), and I was always intrigued by how I would react to something scary on the page versus on the screen. Turns out there were still parts where I had to turn the lights on and remind myself that I wasn't being haunted in an old ramshackle house by a suicidal mother ghost whose kid had drowned. It was interesting to have to think about, to be able to go back in my mind and in the text to figure things out if I needed to or wanted to. With Woman, I started to reevaluate my attitude toward horror, becoming more comfortable with it as something that I hold dear. I never thought I would say such a thing: my tastes used to be very unilateral, cut-and-dry, I like everything EXCEPT FOR horror, which is really quite prejudiced of me!
American Supernatural Tales edited by S.T. Joshi
February - anthology
In February, I continued this trend. My friend bought me this beautiful tome for secret santa that Christmas, and it seemed fitting, as again, I felt like I hadn't read much horror prior to these books. I fell in love with more writers. I loved the educational portion of it, the history of the genre that was laid out in the curation of the stories, as well as the author biographical sketches introducing each selection. I loved finding threads that connected stories other than the horror/supernatural moniker, I loved finding new voices to listen to and be prodded by.
Traveling With Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor
March - travel
I read this book for a number of reasons. I enjoy this author, I love these places, the cover intrigued me, and I shared it with my mom after. The duality of the story, the mother and daughter each having a turn at describing most of the same events, also drew me in. My mother and my relationship has been changing constantly over the years, and I think we're in a very good place now, but even so this book made me look at our relationship thus far under different terms, under a different lens. Our family recently went to Israel together, and I wish I'd been able to visit some of the places the women described. This book reignited in me that old desire to travel and write and take pictures of the world.
The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling
April - cozy mystery
Of course I was interested in the new J.K. Rowling endeavor when I heard about it; I wanted to see what her writing was like outside of the film of magical boarding school and incredible Latinate vernacular building. I must say, I was not disappointed. I enjoyed the "slice of life" feel of this book. A bunch of mysteries cropped up throughout, but it was more about the people, what they do in response to those mysteries. I really enjoyed all the different perspectives encapsulated here, something that was never really addressed with Harry Potter, the eponymous boy wizard carrying most of the outlook. A study in politics, it was.
Mr. Churchill's Secretary by Susan Elia Macneal
May - war/military fiction
Speaking of politics! I found a way to make war/military fiction really work for me. I feel like so much attention is already paid to the war itself and the death and destruction involved, and it was great to take a different angle. The secretary who wants to be a codebreaker, the girl power of it all, was wonderful. It was also a nice behind-the-scenes, all the precision and composition and PR that it takes to fight a war.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
June - award-winning
I had heard about this one a bunch, I knew the cover design, but when I read about HeLa cells at work, I was sucked in. What really struck a chord in me is the story behind the history, behind the facts. I've always been a big fan of that, I wanted to be a historical fiction or even just history writer for a long time. Skloot beautifully wove hard facts with personal experience and humanizing anecdotes to create a story that I couldn't put down, made all the more visceral by its reality. This book was written in 2010, so there was also an element of "the road so far" in my reading, a desire to continue the search, to see where the writer and the foundation were now. Science isn't really something I read about all too often of my own accord (unless I find some really cool research at work, as is evidenced by the HeLa connection), and this was an interesting way to bring it to the table without putting me off.
The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi
July - true crime
I've read (a little) true crime before, but this was the first that was still as-yet unsolved by the end of the book. The part of me that loves puzzles and logic and whodunits thoroughly enjoyed this story, but the cut of reality gave it an edge that I wasn't sure I could handle for long periods of time. Especially with the ages of the victims and the circumstances of the killings. This was another book that changed how I look at/think about endings, because the mystery of the Monster of Florence is still just that, a mystery. The epilogue allows Preston to distance himself from the events of the book, letting his final discussions be colored more by emotion rather than his investigative tendencies.
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde and Girl Reading by Katie Ward
August - alternate history
I couldn't decide between these two books, but I think they worked well in tandem. I absolutely love Jane Eyre, and I adored the use of actual paintings as inspiration for stories. Like I did with the Degas book last year, I was constantly looking up the paintings to see how they made me feel, what they made me think of. I also re-read bits of Jane Eyre just for the occasion. They are very different sort of books: EA of a younger stripe and more fantastical, while GR was more aloof and philosophical. They each imagine in a different way, and I liked the way they portrayed the reader and her relationship to the text. I also appreciated the postmodern/meta idea of me, a girl, reading the book called Girl Reading. I chuckled more than a few times thinking about that one. GR reminded me of an idea I've had for a (short?) story that I could pick up again with a few tips from Katie Ward...
Whip It by Shauna Cross
September - romantic comedy
ROLLER DERBY! Need I really say any more? I guess I will. This was a fun book. It had a lot of the essence of the sport, the heart, although it didn't spend too long on the game itself. I could definitely see myself falling in love with the idea of derby much earlier if I'd read this: there's so much emotion and dedication and empowerment and creativity and hilarity and determination all rolled into this book and this sport, and I cannot imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't found it when I did.
Harvest by Tess Gerritsen
October - medical thriller
I don't think I'd really read anything like this before, and it really helped me get into the "eclectic" part of the challenge. This was one of the most difficult subjects to pick a book for, mostly because medical thriller is awash with series and continuations and I just sort of wanted a standalone thing. Funnily enough, this book fit in again with the thinking about endings, and with the strong investigative ladies that have cropped up in other books I've picked for myself this year. I think I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
Yes Please by Amy Poehler
November - Published in 2014
Amy Poehler is one of my favorite ladies. She's hilarious, she's talented, she's forward-thinking, Smart Girls at the Party is one of the coolest things I think that has come around lately, and I'm just generally in awe of her as a human being. The chance to read this book felt like a little sit-down with Amy, and it was refreshing and interesting and funny. She has an absolutely wonderful voice and her stories range from drugs to comedy to growing up to writing, to all sorts of things.
Seconds by Bryan Lee O'Malley
December - graphic novel
Bryan Lee O'Malley wrote another graphic novel! I loved it, and I also loved the Scott Pilgrim reference he worked in on page 135. Seconds had a lot going for it, and it was a relatively easy read, but I still had to sometimes go back a few pages and re-read portions to really get myself into every possible nook and cranny of the story. It is a coming-of-age story for someone who already thinks they've come of age, very appropriate for me at this time in my life.
This wrap-up is coming in late (again) this year because I did not have my act together enough in December to finish my November post (because I didn't have my act together in November, either) and my December post and a 2014 retrospect...I didn't have it in me. Or maybe I did, but there was so much else going on that I couldn't take the time to dig it out. I realized, over the course of writing out these blurbs, that a lot of the books I've chosen this year made me think a lot about endings. Or rather, reevaluate the idea of an ending, as most of the ones that really made me think were the ones that had unresolved endings or just brought us up to speed. I feel like I could wax poetic about how nothing really ends, does it, everything just sort of leads into the next beginning, but I'm not sure I want to be as heavy-handed as all that. Mostly because I don't feel like I'm at an "ending" moment in my life; rather, I feel like I'm just past the honeymoon stage in a lot of things, and I'm ramping up to something new and exciting in almost every aspect. The obsession with endings, with conclusions and "moral of the story"s and everything wrapped up in a tidy bow by the time you reach the back cover, seems to be a very short-sighted and static way of viewing things. I'm trying to be more open, more fluid, and the books that I chose this year seemed to reflect that subconsciously.
Going back and reading my 2013 wrap-up, I'm struck by my last paragraph. I still feel as if this is a bit of a struggle for me, and I think it would help to be reminded of these resolutions periodically, rather than just looking back the same time next year. A lot of new things are going to be happening to me this year, and again I want to be able to give myself space to adapt to them and to rise to them, without allowing myself to shrink away or hide behind established opinions or empty words. I've thought a lot about endings this year, and I think 2015 should be more about beginnings, more about the transition between the two and the fact that sometimes change should just be looked at as change, rather than something beginning while something else is ending. In 2015, I'm going to aim to be more adaptable. To let my defenses down, to have conversations and read books that maybe make me a little bit uncomfortable but will ultimately be good for me. So here is to my third year of reading eclectically!

DEC - Seconds

December review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2014: Seconds by Bryan Lee O'Malley, 2014. [Graphic Novel category]

I devoured Scott Pilgrim when the graphic novels came out. I inhaled them. I loved them and read them multiple times, and then fell madly in love with the movie when Edgar Wright released it unto the world in 2010. I've been Ramona Flowers for Halloween multiple years in a row--you don't spend that many hours making a duct tape subspace purse not to use it at every opportunity, amirite?? Needless to say, Brian Lee O'Malley's head has always been a great place for me to be, and I was beyond pumped when I read that his newest (standalone) graphic novel would be coming out this year. Still in the graphic style we all know and love, Seconds is a new kind of story about young adult angst and getting your shit together. There's a quote from Guillermo del Toro on the back of the dust cover of my edition that reads, "In Seconds, Bryan Lee O'Malley plays the angst of youth against the fabric of a larger epic. In doing so, he enriches both." I agree wholeheartedly with this statement. The story is about Katie, a chef currently living above the first restaurant she started while she's waiting for her new restaurant to be finished. It's about a girl who pretty much has things together, but her obsession with these mushrooms that allow you essentially a "do-over" causes her to attempt to change every little thing, each time waking up in a slightly new version of her world. As she attempts to adapt, things get stranger and stranger and the house spirit whose mushrooms they are gets angrier and angrier. Katie doesn't understand why, and she continues on, bull-headedly, making things that she doesn't understand worse.
When writing reviews, I learned that it's always best to talk about the setpieces in movies, which are storylines or thinks that are integral to the storyline, without which the story built around them would fall apart. The setpieces in Seconds are the restaurant(s), the dresser on which Lis first appears to Katie, the mushrooms themselves. Whatever else changes in the storylines, these things always exist. Katie moves through her revisions, as she tries to make her errors right, fixing small things that have larger repercussions, trying to get her life and her restaurants and her relationship *just* right. And it all goes to hell. There is an element of the fabulous in this tale, and its casualness makes it all the more entertaining for it. O'Malley has certainly retained the glory that made Scott Pilgrim into the cult classic it was; his talent hasn't diminished with time. His witticisms (some even breaking the fourth wall), his careful scene construction with multiple panels in a row that may not contain any text whatsoever but simply emotion, his imaginative plot impetus--these are all things that work well for this story and that cement my reaction to it.
And of course, good ol' Brian Lee O'Malley, paying homage to everyone's beloved Scott Pilgrim in my favorite part of the entire book:

It is clearly a favorite joke, executed brilliantly by Michael Cera in the film, and I was more than a little amused to have it snuck into this new endeavor. And somehow, it still works here. In all actuality, I feel like that's sort of what Katie's story is about: taking her old life and trying to make it fit with this new one she's creating or forging. Her speech at the end to the demon-y house spirit rings true for someone unsure how to move forward without making innumerable mistakes, and ultimately the endgame message is that those mistakes are inevitable, innumerable, unavoidable, and meant to be cherished. Lived through and learned from. A message that, while a tad heavy, is something we could all stand to remember from time to time, especially at the junctures in our lives where a choice could send us down one of any number of branches, just like in the story. (Also, if anyone is interested, I really enjoyed reading this review of Seconds, by Douglas Wolk from Comics Alliance.)

NOV - Yes Please

November review for Eclectic Reader's Challenge 2014: Yes Please by Amy Poehler, 2014. [Published in 2014 category]

I've been waiting to read Yes Please by Amy Poehler aaaaaaall year, and I was not disappointed. Yes Please feels very organic, feels very much like Amy is just chatting with you over a glass of wine on your couch, trying not to spill as she makes you laugh and laugh with nonchalant, raw stories from her life. I have long been a fan of Amy Poehler and her writing, and I believe her to be one of the great comedians of our time. She is a strong, able, successful woman who created a strong, able, successful woman TV persona in addition to getting her name in the writing credits of countless shorts and episodes and scripts. She created an amazing vlog endeavor called "Smart Girls At The Party" with Meredith Walker and Amy Miles that has set up a precedent for empowering media material for young women, answering questions and just generally being a killer role model. The inside flap describes her "hilarious and candid book" as a "collection of stories, thoughts, ideas, lists, and haikus from the mind of one of our most beloved entertainers," and I think that is a more than apt description. Yes Please could easily be called either a memoir or a collection of essays, and Poehler brings elements of both into her finished work. Printed on glossy paper to highlight all the pictures and mementos included, Yes Please is a heavy book, but the heaviness does not extend to her prose style or her overall tone. Poehler is easy with her storytelling, describing a past that sometimes makes you double-take and skirting certain, more private issues with panache.

There is certainly a degree of "bandwagon fever," (as tinges anything in a successful genre these days,) coming quickly on the heels of books like Bossypants by Tina Fey, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me by Mindy Kaling, Girl Walks Into A Bar by Rachel Dratch, Not That Kind of Girl by Lena Dunham, and others, but Poehler definitely has her own way of doing things. Her voice is definitively different from these other hilarious ladies, and she admits to having read a number of the aforementioned texts during her writing process for this book. She includes pictures and lists from her childhood, sections written by her parents, a chapter penned by good friend and fellow writer-actor Seth Myers, and many other deviations from the standard memoir format. To be fair, Poehler herself is a deviation from the standard format, and it only makes sense that her own book about her life would follow her lead.

I think it would be extraordinarily difficult to pinpoint one singular part of this book that I liked more than the rest, but there were a number of sections that were more interesting to me. I particularly enjoyed Poehler's descriptions of how she got into comedy and improv, on both the Chicago scene and the New York one. Her chapters devoted to SNL and Parks and Rec were thrilling, and more than ever do I want to be able to write like this woman does and do things like this woman does. There were definitely a few lines that spoke to me more than others did, like this following little passage:

"Everyone lies about writing [...] No one tells the truth about writing a book. Authors pretend their stories were always shiny and perfect and just waiting to be written. The truth is, writing is this: hard and boring and occasionally great but usually not." (p.x)

This. This is beautiful. Poehler constantly keeps it real without making a big deal about it. She is honest and humble and unassuming and she talks about hard work as an expected and welcomed part of life. I was reading this book in November, which much of the writing world knows as NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, where one attempts to put down 50,000+ words in 30 days or less. This was the first year I'd actually completed it, or "won," and it felt sublime. However, my other writing (read: this blog) seems to have fallen by the wayside over the year and as almost a hangover from NaNo and all the technical writing I do at work all day. My boyfriend pointed this out to me recently, and it sort of took me aback: I hadn't quite realized how much my own personal writing had taken a backseat until I looked at the summary of this year vs. last year's blog, and I've only written about half the posts I did last year. I guess what I'm trying to say is, Amy gets it. Writing is hard. I've let myself get away with far too much the past year and this book reminded me that I needed to get back.

Eclectic Reader Challenge 2015

Second Year of Eclectic Reader Challenge!

Categories

1. Retellings (of fairytale, legends or myth)
2.  A book set in a country starting with the letter S (eg. Sweden, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Slovakia)
3.  PI Crime (fiction featuring a private investigator)
4.  A novel published before you were born
5. Contemporary romance
6. Fiction for foodies (fiction featuring food/food related business)
7. Microhistory (Non Fiction)
8. Science Fiction set in space
9. Sports (Fiction or Non fiction)
10. Featuring diversity
11. Epistolary Fiction (fiction written in the format of letters/emails/diary entries)
12. Middle Grade/YA Adventure