The Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Only sixteen, Hazel is a "professional sick person" with terminal cancer - then she meets the charming Augustus Waters, who makes her reexamine her ideas about what we leave behind when we die.

In spite of rave reviews from everyone I know, I put off reading The Fault for a long time. As expected, I sniffled my way through the last fifty pages of this beautiful, beautiful book. And laughed through the rest. It's funny, deep, and heartbreaking.

Green never writes down to teens: Hazel and Gus are smart and tough. Their romance is swoony and sad without veering into cheesy movie-of-the-week territory (I'm looking at you, Love Story.)

Without being didactic, the book celebrates great poets and writers who say what the rest of us can only feel. Hazel and Gus connect over her favorite novel, An Imperial Affliction (don't try to buy it - it's fake literature. And all of us are glad that Green didn't try anything frustrating and literary at the end of The Fault the way Peter van Houten did!). The two teens quote T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens to each other and argue against easy platitudes that on deeper reflection say nothing at all.

Should you read this book? Are you a person who will one day have to confront death? Since I've only ruled out vampires, then yes, you need to read this book.

Another YA writer who combines real wit and pathos is Sherman Alexie. If you still have tears left, try The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. (But not in the same week, because you may dehydrate.)

Anne Frank is one of the writers Gus and Hazel pay tribute to, so definitely read (or reread) The Diary of a Young Girl.

In the acknowledgements, Green recommends a book about the history of cancer called The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee for those who want to know more.

Tell Us We're Home

Tell Us We're Home by Marina Budhos
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Three friends whose mothers are all housekeepers in their affluent town drift apart as each girl struggles separately to find a place in America where she can feel at home.

Each girl is an immigrant from a different country: Jaya is from Trinidad, Maria is from Mexico, and Lola is from Slovakia. They were originally drawn together by shared feelings of alienation from the wealthy Americans around them and the fact that their mothers are all maids.

After Jaya Lal's mother's employer suffers a massive heart attack, Mrs. Lal is suspected of stealing some valuable jewelry and fired. Jaya secretly wonders if the accusations might be true.

Maria meets a handsome blanco boy and offers to give him Spanish lessons as a way to get close. She secretly struggles with feelings of envy for the privileged lives of the Americans her mother works for.

Lola (my favorite of the three) is sharp-tongued and outspoken, and frustrated with her depressed father's unwillingness to find work. She resents her own outsider status at school, but everything she does to stand up for herself pushes people further away.

The story is heavily invested in character development and is told in a non-linear way, with plenty of flashbacks and descriptions. (At first, it was difficult to follow the main thread of the story and to know which character's POV I was following.) Each girl comes to a revelation about herself and her relationship to her new country, but other than that there is little resolution to their problems.

It's not the kind of book I typically gravitate toward, and for me it was just okay. Too slow-moving, and I found myself getting irritated with the girls for devaluing their mothers' hard work by being ashamed of them. It was frustrating how the affluent white characters were stereotypes and were characterized as "the enemy" even though the girls made almost no attempts to get to know their white classmates as people.

It's the kind of book grownups want kids to love, but that doesn't offer a compelling story to hold their attention, and is deadly serious without any levity to liven things up. Definitely for older teens with literary tastes. For my YA realistic fiction, I'll stick with John Green (The Fault in Our Stars) or Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian) who both have a much-needed sense of humor when tackling difficult issues.

Shadow and Bone

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Grisha come for Alina when they realize she is one of them: powerfully gifted, and destined to help rid their land of the terrible darkness of the Unsea.

Alina grew up as a peasant in an orphanage with her best friend Mal before they both joined the army. She doesn't believe she has any magic, but the Darkling, leader of the elite magicians known as the Grisha, understands exactly what she is and how to increase her power. They take her far from Mal, who Alina is in love with, and into the unfamiliar opulence of the king's court.

Alina is soon plunged into Grisha training and the deeply entangled politics of the king's court, where the Darkling is the real power. Slowly, Alina begins to hope that she can help the Grisha heal a diseased portion of land called the Unsea, which is inhabited by flesh-eating monsters and divides the kingdom of Ravka in half.

Shadow and Bone is set in a fantasy version of feudal Russia, complete with a weakened royal family and a Rasputin-like adviser called the Apparat. There's plenty of adventure, some great romance, and a terrible threat in the form of the shadowy Unsea. It's an impressive first novel, and I've already bought the sequel, Siege and Storm, which comes out on June 4th. The final book is Ruin and Rising, scheduled for 2014.

Shadow and Bone adds to all the excellent fantasy being published today that stars strong and interesting heroines. (I'm in book heaven!) If you've read it and can't stand to wait for the sequels, check out these series in the meantime:

• Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor, which is set in Prague and features a blue-haired art student named Karou who sketches monsters.
• I loved Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, which has a strong medieval Europe setting and one of the coolest takes on dragons I've seen in a long time.
• For those looking for fantasy worlds that are non-European, try Eon (and its sequel Eona, which completes the story) by Alison Goodman. It's set in a fantasy version of China and Japan and has plot elements similar to Shadow and Bone. Plus, more dragons!
• Or for a book set in modern-day London that has cool magic, two fantastic male leads, and a series that's already complete, try The Amulet of Samarkand by Jonathan Stroud.

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Frankie Landau-Banks goes from "Bunny Rabbit" to criminal mastermind during her sophomore year at the exclusive Alabaster Prep boarding school.

When Frankie starts dating Matthew Livingston, she feels that she has been given a window into his world of confident privilege and power. And she desperately wants to belong in her own right, not just as a pretty girl the boys underestimate. She discovers the existence of the male-only Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds and secretly begins pulling their strings, orchestrating larger and more elaborate pranks.

This is one of my favorite YA books. Frankie is smart, her pranks are genuinely clever and funny, and she is as conflicted and occasionally insecure as any other ordinary high-school girl. Unlike most high school girls, though, she knows exactly what she wants and often has a good idea of how to get it. (This is also the book that introduced me to P.G. Wodehouse, for which I shall be eternally grateful.)

Written like an anthropological study (or a profile of the criminal mind at work), The Disreputable History chronicles one ambitious, smart girl's year of coming into her own. A book club or an English class could probably spend a quarter analyzing the power dynamics at play, Frankie's ideas about rebellion against the Panopticon, or how each character (male and female) represents a different response to patriarchy.

What to read after you're finished:

The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver by E. Lockhart - for your next fix of clever, feminist chick lit.

The Interventionists: Users' Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life, edited by Gregory Sholette - "interventionists" create art to bring awareness to issues of injustice (Lockhart cites this in the afterward).

The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse - For a hilarious look into the machinations of the Old Boys' Club by "a prose stylist of such startling talent that Frankie nearly skipped around with glee when she first read some of his phrases." Amen.

Team Human by Justine Larbalesteir - another YA writer who consistently writes strong and believable female heroines.

A few of my favorite quotes from the book:

• "Secrets are more powerful when people know you've got them," said Mr. Sutton. "You show them the tiniest edge of your secret, but the rest you keep under wraps."
• "It had been, she felt, a dumb event preceded by excellent invitations."
• "She wasn't a person who needed to be liked so much as she was a person who liked to be notorious."
• "Frankie did not accept life as it was presently occurring."
• “It is better to be alone, she figures, than to be with someone who can’t see who you are. It is better to lead than to follow. It is better to speak up than stay silent. It is better to open doors than to shut them on people.”

Leviathan Wakes

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Idealistic Jim Holden discovers a derelict spaceship and unwittingly ignites a deadly war; meanwhile, run-down cop Detective Miller searches for a missing woman who may have the key to it all.

Growing tensions between Earth, Mars, and the scattered stations of the Belt lead to war in a galaxy where human annihilation is as simple as throwing rocks into a planet's atmosphere. The stars remain unreachable because human curiosity has stagnated amidst age-old societal problems. The ethnic racism of the past has turned into racism based on what level of gravity a person grew up in. Enter our heroes.

The starship Scopuli was empty when Jim Holden stumbled upon it, but someone is willing to start a war that could make humans extinct just to hide the truth behind its vanished crew. In the ensuing chaos, the fate of Julie Mao is easy to overlook. But Detective Miller, once a good cop and now burnt out alcoholic, finds himself drawn to the missing woman and determined to track her down.

This book is a perfect cocktail of horror, noir crime fiction, and space opera. It's science fiction that's all about the characters - an idealist and a cynic - and the disappointing parts of human nature. It's fast-moving, tense, and in places utterly terrifying - which is everything good space opera should be. (It reminded me of Firefly, too, which is awesome!) The story is dark, but because of the balance of likable characters it manages to be optimistic about human potential rather than veering into nihilism.

Leviathan Wakes feels like a self-contained story and can stand alone pretty well, but I'm definitely going to pick up the sequel, Caliban's War, as well as the final book of the Expanse trilogy, Abaddon's Gate.

Final observations:

• The mystery element and world-building made me think of Isaac Asimov's classic The Caves of Steel.
• The authors (James S.A. Corey is actually the pen name for Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) mention being influenced by the Dread Empire's Fall series by Walter Jon Williams, which starts with The Praxis.
• I would say it's the best space opera I've read since A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge.
• Vomit zombies

Wisdom of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle by Betty MacDonald
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mothers at their wits' end find cures for childhood diseases such as Wont-Pick-Up-Toys, Selfishness, Fighter-Quarreler-itis, and others, from the wise and kind Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.

Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's house is upside down and smells of cookies - it's a natural haven for every child in the neighborhood. And her phone is usually ringing because of a frustrated parent seeking her tactful wisdom. With Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's cure kits and sound advice, parents learn how to teach their misbehaving children valuable lessons about growing up and getting along.

My favorite story in this collection had to be the last, where a mother and father team up to show their twin daughters how constant quarreling looks from the outside. Many of the ailments and cures are absurdly exaggerated and so humorously portrayed that they don't come across as preachy morality tales: one little girl won't wash, so her parents plant radishes in the dirt on her skin; one boy has so many wonderful toys he won't pick up that he gets trapped in his room and has to be fed through the window; and a chronic answer-backer sees her mirror image in a rude parrot named Penelope.

Bomb: The Race to Build - and Steal - the World's Most Dangerous Weapon

Bomb: The Race to Build—and Steal—the World's Most Dangerous Weapon by Steve Sheinkin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sheinkin tells the riveting story of how people discovered the secrets of the atom bomb - some with careful brainstorming at Los Alamos, some by reading stolen documents delivered by spies. There is heroic sabotage, principled deceit, and a breakneck race to build the world's first superweapon before the enemy does. The development of the atomic bomb was a critical moment for humanity, and Sheinkin gives us all the twists and turns that led to the fateful flight of the Enola Gay and the long arms race of the Cold War.

It is a story everyone should know. "In the end, it is a difficult story to sum up. The making of the atomic bomb is one of history's most amazing examples of teamwork and genius and poise under pressure. But it's also the story of how humans created a weapon capable of wiping our species off the planet. It's a story with no end in sight. "And, like it or not, you're in it." - p. 236

Add this book to your reading list with John Hersey's Hiroshima and Richard Rhodes' books The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. If those sound too intimidating, then check out Peter Seller's absurdist comedy Dr. Strangelove, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. You'll laugh so hard you might cry.

Eona

Eona by Alison Goodman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Now on the run and trying to uncover the secrets of the spirit dragons to help heal the Empire, Eona must decide who to trust - and who to love.

How Eona feels throughout the book:


How I felt:


Maybe I'm just too old for all this angsty sturm und drang. Eona has so many feelings. (A lot happens in this long book, but to me it felt slow because of all the exhausting emotional beats Eona hits.) Still learning to be comfortable in her true identity as a woman after spending years disguised as a boy, Eona also struggles to balance the demands of her incredible power with her loyalty to the Emperor.

She feels the dark draw of the pleasures of power, embodied in Lord Ito (gag me), who is as rapey, unrepentant and manipulative as ever. Still, she is drawn to him and able to be honest in ways she does not dare with Emperor Kyto - even though Kyto has given her a position of supreme authority and trust. Her Mirror Dragon may represent the virtue of Truth, but Eona can't seem to stop lying even to the people she loves most: and her every misstep places those around her in terrible danger.

For those who loved Eon, this book definitively concludes the duology and deals with the complex emotions of power, love, guilt, and desire. For me, it could have been shorter.

Feed

Feed by M.T. Anderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck."

Titus and his friends are products of the Feed: a never-ending stream of advertising and information implanted into their brains. During an ordinary trip to the Moon, Titus meets the smart, beautiful Violet. When a protester hacks their minds, the teens lose contact with the Feed and for the first time get an inkling that there may be a better way to live.

As unsettling and soul-scarring as Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, Feed is one of those novels that will grow in your subconscious long after you've finished it. Titus is as self-absorbed as Holden Caulfield, but far less articulate. Titus's dystopia is much more Brave New World than 1984, where the affluent are lulled into lives of mindless consumption. Hairstyles change within hours, the oozing lesions everyone has developed become a fashion statement, and School is a trademark, not a place.

Stray observations:

• The pulsing red fields of filet mignon that Titus thinks are part of nature have never quite left my psyche. *Queasiness*
• TV show from the Feed: Oh? Wow! Thing!
• Song lyrics for a love song from the Feed: I like you so bad / And you like me so bad. / We are so bad / It would be bad / If we did not get together, baby, / Bad baby, / Bad, bad baby. / Meg bad.
• "That's one of the great things about the feed - that you can be supersmart without ever working. Everyone is supersmart now. You can look things up automatic, like science and history, like if you want to know which battles of the Civil War George Washington fought in and shit." - 47

Shade's Children

Shade's Children by Garth Nix
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Unless you escape, by age fourteen the Overlords will come to harvest you for parts. If you manage to survive the well-organized hunters, you just may find refuge with Shade and help him destroy the Overlords. And if Shade doesn't send you on a suicide mission, you may make it to adulthood. Maybe.

Fifteen years ago every adult over the age of fourteen vanished in the Change. Soon the world was crawling with creatures who locked up the remaining children to be farmed for parts. On their Sad Birthday, children are taken away and suffer a fate worse than death: they are transformed into creatures who fight in the Overlord's incomprehensible war games and hunt stray children.

In this hostile world, escapees Gold-Eye, Ella, Ninde, and Drum have to rely on each other to survive. They become guerrilla soldiers in fight they don't fully understand, pawns in the hands of the sole remaining adult: Shade, who has a plan for taking down the Overlords. But Shade isn't exactly human anymore.

Garth Nix wrote a completely chilling post-apocalyptic world with unstoppable foes and untrustworthy allies that completely blows The Maze Runner out of the water on every level. I read it with a knot in my stomach, which is a sign of good sci-fi horror. Fans of Nix's Abhorsen trilogy will be satisfied by this pitch-black story of survival in the face of inhuman enemies.