The Lost Art of Reading

Ulin, David L. The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time. Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 2010. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/10530802]

Booktalk:

Sometime in the last few years -- I don't remember when, exactly -- I noticed I was having trouble sitting down to read. That's a problem if you read, as I do, for a living, but it's an even bigger problem if you read as a way of life.

p.9

"I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear," Joan Didion notes in her essay "Why I Write," and it's no understatement to suggest that this is what the dynamic between a writer and a reader offers from the other side as well. Or it was, at any rate, until the moment I became aware, in an apartment full of books, that I could no longer find within myself the quiet necessary to read.

p.33

Review:
The Lost Art of Reading, which is really a long essay more than a book, chronicles Ulin's realization that he can't find the quiet to read in our plugged in, always on world. With all of the tweets and blogs and google searches and links leading to links leading to more links all with music playing the background, it's an understandable dilemma. It's also not that original. What makes Ulin's account different is the way he draws a parallel between his own inability to concentrate enough to just read and his son's inability to do the same because of classroom mandated annotations. Granted, this is not the main focus of the book, though his son's Great Gatsby assignment is what starts Ulin evaluating his own reading problems. Still, it is what really hit home for me. Two of the five articles I've linked to above are about over-"wired" kids who are so plugged into technology that they can't focus. Everything is an exercise in multitasking. When we finally sit these kids down in front of a great book like The Great Gatsby, why do we make them stop reading on a regular basis? I know, I know, it's so we can force them to analyze all of the similes and metaphors and tone and allusions. And so the kids can prove that they did the reading assignment. But really, why don't we let them just read?

Anyway, I loved this little book. It's full of readerly quotes from plenty of authors. I made a conscious effort to sit and read it in a day (it's roughly 100 pages), just to prove that I could maintain the concentration that Ulin could not. I know; I'm petty. I had no trouble turning off the TV, not checking status updates or email. I wrote down book titles I wanted to look up later on my due date card. And really, it wasn't that hard. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I do most of my reading on the train to and from work when I don't have an internet connection. At home I generally watch TV and at work, when I'm not actually working, I'm still on the computer. It was nice to know that I still have it in me to sit and read an entire book in a day. It's been a while.

Since reading this book, I have noticed that whenever I sit down at the computer to write (and review) I have all of Ulin's multitask-y symptoms. I check my email, check facebook, read articles, read all of your blogs, all with a blogger window or word document untouched in my taskbar. I'll write a sentence, read an article, format the picture for a blog post, check my email. I can't sustain the concentration to write in the way that I did in school or even the way that I do when I read (I don't know how you authors do it!). Ulin says his need to unplug when reading is part of the reason he hasn't switched to an ereader. If he could surf the web in the same device that he uses to read a book, he'd be doomed! Sometimes I feel that way about writing and reviewing. When I was an undergrad, I almost always wrote papers, or at least the backbone of papers, longhand before sitting down at a computer to type them out. I used to do that for my reviews as well, back when I was posting 2-3 a week. Instead now, I have a backlog of books to review that'll last me at least the rest of the month, and I still only manage to post one a week. If only I knew now what I knew then. :)

So, maybe I'll try to unplug a bit more often and get back to writing while Ulin unplugs and gets back to reading. How about you? Is the information superhighway impeding on your intellectual pursuits?


Book source: checked it out from work

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The Full Spectrum for Nonfiction Monday

Levithan, David, and Billy Merrell, eds. The Full Spectrum: A New Generation of Writing About Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, and Other Identities. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/1022264]

Awards:
Lambda Literary Award (Children's/Young Adult, 2006)
ALA Rainbow List (Young Adult Nonfiction, 2008)

Booktalk:

"This book would have been very different if it had been compiled fifteen years ago, when I [David Levithan] was in high school It would have been different ten years ago, or even five years ago. I have faith that in five years, times will have changed enough to alter our snapshot here. And in ten years. And in fifteen years. This is a remarkable time to be young and queer in America. There is progress, and there is backlash. There is love, and there is hate. There is hope, and there is despair. Things are changing fast, and they're not changing fast enough. ... But change is going to come. Maybe in five years. Maybe in ten. Maybe longer. Maybe sooner.

One way to effect change is to share truths. To tell our stories. To make our hears and minds heard."

Notes to the Reader

So David Levithan and Billy Merrell began collecting pieces written by queer youth under the age of 23. All the pieces are non-fiction (with some name changes). All of them represent the author's unique perspective on the queer youth experience. Together the submissions create a vast array of colors and light, The Full Spectrum.

Review:
The pieces in this anthology tackle a myriad of topics: coming out, religion, first love, unaccepting parents/peers, religion, supportive parents/peers, the Boy Scouts, the military, religion(!); in a variety of settings: high school, New Your City, college, junior high, Egypt. They are written by young people who fall under the umbrella term "queer," but identify as gay, bi, trans, lesbian, gender-variant, and more. Some of the pieces are positive and affirming, some speak of overcoming unbearable hardship and hate, some end as hopeless as they began. All of them are important and valid, just like the young people who wrote them.

As a collection, The Full Spectrum is ambitious. It strives to present a multitude of experiences and identities, and it does. The mix of guys and girls, trans or not, is great. The mix of topics is also expansive, and given how much religion is mentioned, the mix of opinions on it is also widely variant. Also the mix of poetry, prose, letters, and diary entries was great. I never felt bogged down in too much angsty poetry or journal writing; all was in balance. This mix of writing styles will, hopefully, make this book accessible and attractive to readers of all stripes.

My main problem was with the editing. Some of these pieces are beautiful bits of polished writing.* Some of them are not. I imagine this has a lot to do with the state they were in when they were submitted. Many of these pieces were written by young people about the most traumatic periods of their lives! Everything is in their writing and everything is raw. Everything. It is completely understandable that some of them lack polish. These pieces could have used the guidance of a good editor, and it is a shame that they didn't get it. That said, these stories are compelling, each and every one. If I, an almost-30-year-old, engaged, queer woman had such a strong reaction to this book, I cannot even begin to imagine how much solace and revelation this book could provide for someone still going through the experiences described there in. I saw myself in these stories. I saw my friends. Everyone deserves to be able to see themselves in stories like these too (even kids in New Jersey).


Book source: I bought it at a signing with some of the contributors when it first came out.
Full disclosure: One of my favorite people in the world has a poem in this book (it's awesome). There is also a piece by one of my least favorite people (not so great). Not only do these two biased opinions cancel each other out, but I also skipped both pieces when re-reading The Full Spectrum for this review.


*Jovencio d la Paz, I have the HUGEST literary crush on you. Please decide to spend the rest of your life writing stories so heartbreakingly beautiful that they make me cry!

Amiri & Odette

Myers, Walter Dean. Amiri & Odette: A Love Story. Illustrations by Javaka Steptoe. New York: Scholastic Press, 2009. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/6906772]

Booktalk:

I asked myself if there were modern dangers to young people similar to magic spells of folklore. The answer, of course, was a resounding yes, and I began to craft a modern, urban retelling of the Swan Lake ballet.

from "How I Came to Write This Poem"

(unpaged)

Amiri is the basketball playing "prince" of the Swan Lake Projects, destined to fall in love with Odette, a woman "cursed" and owned by her dealer, Big Red.

Review:
I can't unknow the story of Swan Lake, so I am not a good judge of how clear that story in in Amiri & Odette to the non-balletomane. I can, however, say that there are a lot of little touches that hark back to the ballet in beautiful ways, such as Odile's (who is never actually named in the book) black mask at Amiri's party, but nifty connections to the ballet are not the strongest part of this telling. What Myers does fantastically is really make this a story that isn't about princes and magic; he makes it real. The curse is drug addiction and the evil wizard, a dealer. This makes the cause and effect of Amiri's profession of love for Odile a bit nonsensical (Odette's addiction and debt to Big Red will not magically go away if Amiri loves her and only her, nor will she be trapped in that life with no possible means of escape if Amiri doesn't love her), but it also leaves room for non-magical consequences. There is no but-the-spell-said moment that makes Amiri's mistake irreparable. Just because the deal is broken, doesn't mean that the curse is everlasting or that Odette is doomed. Myers' telling makes way for a change in the ending.

The artwork in Amiri & Odette is fabulous. It is dark and gritty and portends doom in a way that dozens of classical white tutus never could.* The artist's note says that the collages that make up the illustrations were painted on slabs on asphalt. They are large and hardcore; each a complete work of art on its own. The texture of the asphalt shows through and Chinese food menus, feathers, pieces of jewelry and other street flotsam are used throughout. The feathers surrounding Odette as she tells Amiri about her entrapment make her look like both an angel and a beast, much like the swan-woman Prince Siegfried is initially afraid of in the original story, even if all the audience sees is a ballerina in white. Or a girl watching a basketball game.


There have been countless stagings of Swan Lake, and all but the most traditional performances (the ones that dance four full acts) are showing some kind of adaptation for the modern audience. I can't embed the videos here, but I can give you links to a few versions of Swan Lake:
Classic Odette Variation by Svetlana Zakharova (2:43)
Classic Odile Variation by Svetlana Zakharova (2:40)
Matthew Bourne's staging of the pas de deux between Odette and Prince Siegfried (5:58)
Parody of the "Baby Swans" pas de quatre by Ballet Trockadero (1:37)


Book source: Philly Free Library

*Romantic white tutus (the long ones), on the other hand, suggest doom quite nicely. In the midst of this trend of YA paranormal romances, where is the modern day adaptation of Giselle?!?

Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: The Authorized Adaptation

Bradbury, Ray. Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451: The Authorized Adaptation. Illustrations and letters by Tim Hamilton. Introduction by Ray Bradbury. New York: Hill and Wang - Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009. Print.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/8185039]

Booktalk:

"It's fine work. Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan."

p.8

In a world of fire-proof buildings, all that's left for firemen to do is burn. They hunt down the owners of personal libraries and burn their books. Without books, society watches the walls, parlour walls that show passive and faux interactive programming all day. Everyone watches the same shows, everyone has the same opinions, everyone falls in line.

Review:
I have a confession to make. I've never read Faherenheit 451. I know that makes me a bad book lover, bad librarian, and possibly even a bad person. I've known this for a while, and still I haven't read it. Maybe if I had, I would have liked this graphic novel adaptation better.

For a sparse book to become a graphic novel, with even less text, things must be cut. Unfortunately, the lack of dialog between the characters was coupled with really dark illustrations that didn't exactly show everything that was being left out in the text. Don't get me wrong, the illustrations were amazing. They were mostly in shades of blacks and grays with bright splashes of orange; the threat of fire was always present. The only frames that were free of the darkness and the orange flames were those picturing Montag and Clarisse. Unfortunately their interactions were so brief and curt that I didn't particularly care that she was, clearly, Montag's way out of the life he had built for himself. Worse than that, I couldn't understand why her death affected him so much. This lack of understanding or empathy made it hard for me to follow him through his life-altering decisions thereafter.

The one big highlight for me was Bradbury's introduction. It was beautiful, moving, and reminded us all to pick one book to memorize should books become contraband. His writing at the opening of this graphic novel has inspired me to go find a copy of the original novel. His writing style seems more to my taste. Maybe once I've (finally) read it, I'll appreciate the graphic novel adaptation more.

For some positive thoughts on this book see Natalie's review at This Purple Crayon.


Book source: Philly Free Library

Hard Love

Wittlinger, Ellen. Hard Love. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks, 1999.
[Book cover credit: www.librarything.com]

Awards:
Lambda Literary Awards, Children's/Young Adult (1999)
ALA Best Books for Young Adults (2000)
Michigan Library Association's Thumbs Up! Award (2000)
Printz Honor (2000)

Summary:
John has been reading zines for a while, especially Escape Velocity, when he finally decides to publish his own. He stalks, then meets, then gets advice from, then becomes friends with Marisol, Escape Velocity's creator as he becomes further steeped in zine culture.

Booktalk:
John has never really been into girls; he's more into writing his zine, Bananafish. He finds inspiration in another zine, Escape Velocity, written by Marisol who he meets while both are dropping their zines off at Tower Records. After these two loners gain each others' trust and become close friends, John realizes he's finally fallen for a girl. And she's a lesbian.

The second book in the series Love & Lies: Marisol's Story is now out in hardback.

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Alexie, Sherman. Ills. Ellen Forney. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Little, Brown & Company, 2007.[Book cover credit: http://www.librarything.com/]
Awards:
Horn Book Fanfare Best Book (2007)
National Book Award, Young People's Literature (2007)
American Indian Youth Literature Award (2008)
ALA Best Books for Young Adults (2008)
Michigan Library Association's Thumbs Up! Award (2008)
And more!

Summary:
Infuriated by the state of the reservation high school and desperate to avoid the lack of future that so many of his friends and family members have already succumbed to, Junior makes a bold choice and decides to go to high school off the reservation, in town. As the only Native American attending Rearden High School, Junior, now called Arnold, must reconcile his reservation life at home with his image and friends at school.

Booktalk:
Junior, to his family and rez friends, or Arnold, to his friends at his all white, off-rez high school, doesn't take anything seriously. Not the constant ass-whippings he receives at the hands of his former classmates and neighbors, who think he is abandoning the tribe.

Not the fact that he's a basketball star at a school where the only other Indian is the mascot.

Not the fact that the adults in his life are plagued by alcoholism and that his father's best friend died fighting over the last sip in a bottle of wine.

Hiding behind his comics, Arnold or Junior has a lot to deal with and no one who can empathize except his diary. Read it, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, to see what he actually takes seriously.

Images are copyrighted by Ellen Forney and used with permission from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. They are from pages 45, 142 and 170.

.

Review for adults:

In this, Alexie's first novel for young adults, he cannot quite give up the ghost and talks to us no-longer-young adults directly. It's well hidden in the plot, so you don't have to worry that teen readers will think he's preaching to you or to them.

"Do you understand how amazing it is to hear that from an adult? Do you know how amazing it is to hear that from anybody? It's one of the simplest sentences in the world, just four words, but they're the four hugest words in the world when they're put together.

You can do it" (p189).

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a funny, funny book with serious implications about racism, alcoholism, peer pressure and a whole lot of masterbating, which is all well and good. These are things that young adults need to learn about and deal with, and humor is a great way to do it. Adults can also enjoy all of these lessons and laughs and comics, but we should take a good look at the adults in Arnold's life. Be the one who says, "You can do it."

Monster

Myers, Walter Dean. Monster. New York, HarperCollins, 1999.
[Book cover credit: http://www.librarything.com/]

Awards:
National Book Award Finalist (Young People's Literature, 1999)
A Horn Book Fanfare Best Book (2000)
ALA Best Books for Young Adults (2000)
Coretta Scott King Honor (Author, 2000)
Edgar Award Nominee, Young Adult (2000)
Printz Award (2000)
South Carolina Junior Book Award Nominee (2000)

Summary:
After a man is shot with his own gun during a robbery, Steve is arrested and put on trial for being the lookout for the robbers. This is the story of his trial, written by Steve, as a screenplay.

Review:
The alternate format of Monster makes this an impossibly fast read given its almost 300 pages. That said, there is a lot going on in this book. Steve, through his screenplay, shows us an almost objective view of his court case and related flashbacks. His camera and character direction are the only things that betray his bias. This is contrasted with his handwritten journal that he keeps in prison during the trial. The raw fear that he shows in this format cannot help but to color the feeling of the clinical portrayal of the court scenes. The combination is at times chilling.

While we are limited to Steve's perspective of his trial and the events leading up to them, we can see, through him, what the people around him are thinking. This contrast between how we see Steve, frightened and trying to distance himself from the situation, and how the adults involved in his case, including his own defense attorney, see him is the main conflict of the book. This will appeal to many readers, but especially those who have been the victim of prejudices and stereotypes. Steve cannot get away from his young-black-man-from-the-hood image, even if it is placed on him rather than coming from him, which is something that many young readers can unfortunately identify with.