I am no longer reviewing books for Thoughtworm.com. Thanks to all of you who have offered comments and book suggestions over the past few years.
Malinda
NEW REVIEWS
Better
Than Running at Night by Hillary Frank
I
still can’t get over how mature the subject matter for young adult books has
become! Better Than Running at
Night is no exception, as Ellie experiences losing her virginity, using
drugs for the first time, and dealing with the confusing world of “open
relationships” when she enters her first year at a prestigious art college.
Hillary Frank has created an incredibly convincing character in Ellie
and pinpoints the feelings that many young women experience as they learn to
balance their sexual desires with their self-worth.
Ellie’s struggle to become a painter is realistic and the scenarios
she encounters at art school are an honest sample of the chaos that many
students face in college. Since
Ellie was so easy to identify with, I was sorry when the book was over so
soon.
Blankets
by
Craig Thompson
Blankets
is a huge (almost 600-page) illustrated novel.
It’s Craig Thompson’s personal tale of growing up and struggling to
understand where Christianity should fit into his life.
He finds love, survives abuse, and works to maintain a relationship
with his family as he matures. The
balance of carefully chosen words and beautiful drawings makes Blankets
one of the best graphic novels I’ve read.
Being able to peek into Blankets
for even a few minutes was well worth the effort it took to carry this big
book around in my backpack all day.
Boonville
by
Robert Mailer Anderson
A
friend gave me this book knowing that I haven’t read adult fiction in a few
years because she had a feeling that I would still enjoy it, and, as usual,
she was right. Boonville
is Robert Mailer Anderson’s first novel, set in a quirky small California
town filled with a mix of hippies, artists, and some hard working, hard living
folks. John Gibson, the main
character, moves to Boonville after inheriting his grandmother’s property
there and is looking for a change in his life.
His interactions while there are bizarre, amazing, and uniquely
Californian. Anderson’s
descriptive prose is filled with unexpected twists and phrases that match his
settings perfectly. Boonville
has definitely aroused my interest in fiction once again.
Empress
of the World
by Sara Ryan
Though
Empress of the World felt rushed through some points of the story, it
was still highly enjoyable because Sara Ryan accurately captured the feelings
of a teenage girl in the process of figuring out her sexual identity.
Nicola is away at a summer academic program so she can figure out if
she really wants to be an archaeologist.
Though she’s not popular at home, she lucks into meeting a group of
friends on the first day and loves feeling accepted and having a place to fit
in. Her worries begin when she
realizes that she’s developing a crush on another member of her group, a
girl named Battle. Inevitably,
the relationship follows along with heartache, confusion, and honesty.
I can imagine that Empress of the World would be a pivotal book
for those girls out there who are exploring their sexual identity.
An added plus is that the book contains some handwritten passages from
Nicola’s journal, and I’m always a sucker for those handwriting fonts!
The
Flow Chronicles by
the Urban Hermitt
Microcosm
Publishing brings us the first book by the prolific zinester, the Urban
Hermitt. The Flow Chronicles
includes tales of the Hermitt’s adventures spent at a liberal arts college,
living in a large Pacific Northwest city, traveling, and attending a Rainbow
Gathering. Hermitt is just trying
to figure it all out, and through daily experiences winds up tackling huge
topics such as gender, queerness, spirituality, and even the role of
subcultures in our society. But
did I mention that the Hermitt loves rap and writes in a unique freestyle
voice that will keep you turning the pages even if you are tired?
The Flow Chronicles is a book filled with a wide variety of
characters and entertaining adventures that will undoubtedly leave you rooting
for the Hermitt to get it all figured out for us.
Limbo:
Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams by Alfred Lubrano
Although
Alfred Lubrano is a successful newspaper reporter and radio commentator, he
still felt a personal level of uneasiness, and even isolation, due to his
working class roots. In Limbo,
he tells his story along with that of other Straddlers of class lines who
he’s interviewed. Lubrano
discusses the differing class values, the possibility of rejection one faces
in the rise above the class level of one’s family of origin, and the
difficulty of feeling at home in the new, higher class that has been achieved.
At present, more Americans are facing the challenges of upward mobility
than ever before, as college becomes part of a standard path and many of us become
the first generation of college graduates in our families.
By presenting these issues on a personal level through the voices of
the people experiencing these tensions, Lubrano is able to make a connection
with the reader in a way that is often missed in nonfiction.
This is a subject that I’d like to explore further since it’s an
issue that I will inevitably face in my future.
Middlesex
by Jeffrey Eugenides
After
finally watching The Virgin Suicides
(adapted from Eugenides’s first novel of the same title) recently and loving
it, I decided to check out Middlesex since the plot sounded interesting and I’d heard a fair amount of
praise for it. I wasn’t let
down at all! Middlesex is an epic tale
that’s centered on Callie, a teenage girl who learns that she’s a
hermaphrodite. The novel shifts
back several generations to Greece and traces Callie’s lineage to pinpoint
the genetic mutation that resulted in her condition. Though I’ve never read a book that’s classified as
historical fiction, I’d imagine that Middlesex
is fairly close to it because many historical details are worked into the
plot, giving the story a strong sense of credibility.
Don’t be negatively swayed by the subject matter of Middlesex,
it’s an amazingly well crafted novel that deserves attention.
Not
as Crazy as I Seem by George Harrar
Though
I usually prefer young adult novels that feature females as the main
character, I was intrigued by Devon in Not as Crazy as I Seem.
He’s a New England high school student with a number of problems that
have almost gotten out of control and are causing his family a lot of stress.
When the book starts, Devon is undiagnosed, but it becomes obvious that
he has some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
As he winds up getting into some trouble in his new town, Devon is
forced to look at his behavior and begins to understand why he needs to
control his actions through little rituals.
Something that I’ve been enjoying as a reader lately is examining
which details the author chooses to include, particularly in fiction, and how
they affect the plot and story in general.
Not as Crazy as I Seem obviously includes the right balance of
details, since I was so easily hooked by Devon’s story.
Please
Don’t Kill the Freshman by Zoe Trope
A
few months ago, splattered all over larger independent magazines were rave
reviews of Please Don’t Kill the Freshman and interviews with its
author Zoe Trope. Trope’s
journal of her freshman year in high school was originally published as a
chapbook, and then due to its success, it was expanded and published as a
full-length book. Initially I was
slightly turned off by Trope’s flighty mix of poetry/prose and had trouble
identifying with the characters, since they are all named with code words and
very little background on them is given.
But, as the book progressed, I was drawn into Zoe’s world.
Trope lives in Portland, is progressive in her thinking, and honestly
writes about gender issues and queerness as they affect teenagers.
She deals with these issues at a level of greyness that isn’t so
easily explained and defined. Also, her sudden success and fame, clashes with school
administration, and relationships with other students and her family are all
worked into the story here and there. So,
Please Don’t Kill the Freshman
won me over in the end because of Zoe’s realistic representation of the life
of a high school student.
Tea
That Burns: A Family Memoir of Chinatown by Bruce Edward Hall
Initially,
Tea That Burns didn’t seem like it was going to hold my attention, but as Bruce Hall
slowly introduced members of his family in the larger context of the Chinese
immigration to America, my interest greatly increased.
With exact detail, Hall reveals the horrid conditions most Chinese men
faced in order to get to America, and then the grim realities of life once
they arrived, like racism, having to live in shanties, and performing work
unacceptable to all other men, all without the comforts of their homeland,
including women. Eventually Hall
describes the rise of Chinatown in New York City, providing many specific
facts and personal tales of his family’s four generations along the way.
I was particularly interested in learning more about the poor treatment
the Chinese received from the federal government, especially in terms of the
bans on immigration.
| All the Wrong Men and One Perfect Boy | The Back Door Guide to Short-Term Job Adventures |
Dove |
| Atlas of the Human Heart | Cigarettes | Guerrilla Learning |
|
Autobio. of a Geisha |
Gig |
The Night is Dark
and I am Far From Home |
| Becoming Anna | Nickel and Dimed |
The Teenage Liberation Handbook |
|
Chicken |
Working
|
|
|
The Day I Went Missing |
|
|
|
Emma Goldman |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Jimmy Corrigan | ||
|
Just Checking |
|
|
|
Learning Joy From Dogs Without Collars |
|
|
| Living At the Edge of the World | ||
|
|
|
|
| Mockingbird Years | ||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Paradise | ||
| Planet of the Blind | ||
| Sex | ||
| Sight Unseen | ||
| Walter Benjamin | ||
|
Being Vegan |
All My Life for Sale |
The Anti-Capitalist Reader |
|
The Book of Tofu |
Amped
|
Beyond Beef |
|
A Cook's Tour |
Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You |
Dancing at Armageddon |
|
|
Free Agents |
Hard Men Humble |
|
Fast Food
Nation
|
Getting Up |
Quiet Rumors |
|
|
|
Red Dust
|
| Incredibly Delicious | Word Freak | Reefer Madness |
| Kitchen Confidential | Yes, Yes, Y'All | Saying Yes |
|
Sushi |
|
The Scalpel and the Butterfly |
|
Vegan Vittles |
|
|
|
Voluptuous Vegan |
|
Seize the Time |
|
The Whole Soy
Cookbook |
|
|
|
|
|
When Broken Glass Floats |
|
Apples and Oranges |
As Nature Made Him |
Adiós, Barbie |
| Brothel | Critical Mass | Beauty Myth |
| Crossing | Culture of Make Believe | Big Rumpus |
|
Devices and Desires |
Despite Everything |
Breeder |
|
Her Way |
Detour | Broken Silence |
|
Make Love Not War |
Disposable People |
The Camera My Mother Gave Me |
| Sex and Single Girls | Fat Land | Exile and Pride |
| She's Not There | Going Up the River | Heartbreak |
| Strip City | If I Live to be 100 | Honor Lost |
|
|
A Language Older Than Words |
Listen Up |
|
|
Mole People |
Manifesta |
|
|
Prison Madness |
The Marriage Sabbatical |
| Riding the Bus with My Sister | Never Done | |
| Slut! | Young Wives' Tales | |
|
|
Stiff |
|
|
|
Waist High in the World |
|
|
|
Waste and Want |
|
|
|
Wuhu Diary |
|
|
|
Younger Than That Now |
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Perks of Being a Wallflower |
|
|
|
|
|
|