What I Was by Meg Rosoff

This book has left me puzzled. And confused about what is puzzling me. I know I read it too quickly to enjoy the good writing, but I wanted to know what was going to happen, and I had only so much lunch time. What I Was is the reminiscence of a 100-year-old man who lived an unexpected life when he was a 16-year-old schoolboy in 1962. (By my calculation, that means that he is telling this in the year 2048. This is not important to the story.) He has started at his third and most mediocre school just off the coast in East Anglia when he meets Finn, a boy his age who lives in a tiny, tidy hut on a bit of land that is accessible only at low tide or by boat.

Finn lives the life the schoolboy wants to live. Finn is the boy the schoolboy wants to be. The schoolboy, whose name is only revealed at the end, disdains, but fully participates in (if that isn't too active a term), the mediocrity of his life: the school, the other students, the life he's being led to. About the one student who follows him around despite all discouragement, he says, "His habitual wretchedness left me cold back then, as so much of human weakness did." In contrast to the dull grayness of his regular life, Finn is beauty and grace and strength. Finn catches his supper in the sea and cooks it over a fire that he has built. Finn climbs up cliffs and maneuvers small boats in a tossing ocean with ease.

Maybe part of what is puzzling me is that the schoolboy and Finn's story doesn't really end. I suppose the stories I've been reading lately have all had satisfying closure, so this story's lack of it has left me somewhat adrift. I still enjoyed the book, although I liked Rosoff's How I Live Now much better.

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Beatrice is 16 and about to choose where she is going to spend the rest of her life. Although she was raised in the faction Abnegation, whose members value selflessness over any other trait, she chooses Dauntless, where bravery is the biggest requirement. After arriving at the Dauntless headquarters, she and the other initiates train in physical and mental combat. Only the top-ranked get to stay, so as the smallest, Beatrice is determined to do the work to get to the top.

So I'm about a year behind the times, but I will add my praise to large amount already out there. This book sucked me in. After reading straight through the first 2/3, I made myself stop because I had to get a least a few hours of sleep before work the next day. Then I didn't let myself pick it up for a few days until I had enough time to finish. I wouldn't recommend that process, because I had been away from the story long enough that the end felt a little disjointed, but I am looking forward to reading the next book, which is coming out May 1.

Tris is a compelling character. Her unstinting bravery and determination moved the book forward at a good pace. I admired her strength and spunkiness. I certainly wouldn't do well in Dauntless. There's a very nice romantic element in this book too, always a plus for me. Although I was inevitably reminded of The Hunger Games books, the comparison didn't detract from this story. But I wonder, would Tris and Katniss get along?

Pastwatch by Orson Scott Card

It's the beginning of the 23rd century. After devastating wars and natural disasters that have reduced the world's population by 90%, the remaining 10% have learned to live in peace and equality. Technology has been developed that allows scientists to watch the past. One woman of Pastwatch, Tagiri, makes a startling discovery: they have the ability to influence the past. A woman of great, almost burdonsome, compassion, Tagiri feels she must use this ability to lessen the suffering of the people of the past, especially the enslaved. As more information is discovered and more researchers join the team, the project evolves into a plan to change Columbus's discovery of America into an enlightening and empowering of the native Americans so that they will be able to work with the Europeans instead of being conquered by them.

I really enjoyed reading about Tagiri and the other related members of Pastwatch. Their thought processes as they work out the probable effects of their changes to history are intriguing. But Orson Scott Card balances this with scenes from Columbus's point of view, which never lets you forget that the theories the team is developing will affect real people.

This book brings up fascinating questions. I'd seen it in college and intended to read it but somehow never did. When it was suggested for Book Group Bronte, I was glad to have a motivation to try again. This month's designated book chooser (we take turns) wanted us to come to the discussion with an answer to this question:
~ If you could go back in time and make one change to make the world a better place, like the scientists do in this book, what would it be?
Suggestions like having Hitler get into art school and saving the library of Alexandria were discussed. I copped out and didn't have an answer. As I thought about the question, I realized that I am so ignorant about history that I don't even have a grasp on what the great tragic events of history are that should be changed. In the book, Tagiri is explaining to her first collaborator why Columbus was so pivotal. She tells him that anyone else who discovered America wouldn't have considered it worth exploring and gives her reasons.

"You've been studying," he said.
"I've been thinking," she said. "I studied all this years ago."

And that is why I could never have been Tagiri.

A few other questions (of the many) that this book brings out:
~ Would you marry your true love and have children if you knew that in a few years you would go back in time, and your marriage and your children's lives would be erased?
~ Has there been a defining moment in your life, a choice that has determined everything you've done since?
~ And of course the big one: not how you would change the past but if you should. If the technology is available, is it your responsibility to use it to try to alleviate suffering, or would it be the ultimate arrogance to take the lives of generations of people into your hands?

We may not have the ability to go back in time and change the past, but the decisions we make now are changing the future, and that's responsibility enough.

Everybody Sees the Ants by A. S. King

This is a hard book to read, but you get to cheer at the end, which I hope isn't too spoilery to start out with. 15-year-old Lucky Linderman has been bullied by his classmate Nader McMillan since they were seven. Even in the summer he can't escape Nader, who is a lifeguard at the pool Lucky goes to with his mom every day. But after Nader grinds Lucky's face into the pavement, Lucky's mom takes him to her brother's house in Arizona so they can both get away for a while.

I adore Lucky. He has a pretty level head and a remarkably kind heart for someone in his situation. He does what he can for another girl who's bullied by Nader. He has a nicely developed sense of humor and is geographically knowledgeable. About the scab on his cheek after the pavement incident, he says, "...it's the exact shape of Ohio. Like - identical. My eyeball is floating lazily on Lake Erie. It's thinking of going water-skiing later." As the weeks go by, the scab gets smaller and progresses through the shapes of several other eastern states. He also turns out to be a good cook, which he discovers when he's driven to desperation by his aunt's canned gravies and microwaved chicken nuggets and volunteers to cook.

While in regular life Lucky seems a small, unobtrusive teenage boy, what no one knows is that he has another life in which he is big, strong and attempting over and over to be a hero. At night when he's asleep, or sometimes when he daydreams in the daytime, Lucky goes to Vietnam to rescue his Grandad, who was listed as missing long before Lucky was born. His Granny devoted her life to reopening the search for him and other soldiers who went missing during the war. Practically every article of clothing Lucky owns has the MIA/POW symbol on it. Despite dozens of attempts, Lucky has not yet managed to rescue Grandad from his guard and the prison camp. But he can talk to Grandad, who listens and offers advice calmly, and is sometimes Lucky's only refuge.

Dash & Lily's Book of Dares by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Dash is walking through the Strand bookstore a few days before Christmas when he sees a red Molskine notebook hidden among the novels. In it are clues from a girl named Lily leading him to other books in the bookstore and eventually a request for his email address if he wants to continue with the game. Dash is more than willing to get to know the mysterious Lily, but he sends her on a search of her own. As both are parentless for the holidays, Dash by choice and Lily by grudging consent, they have the time and freedom to continue their chain of dares. Will they ever meet face-to-face? Will they like each other as much off paper as they do within the notebook?

This book is written from both Dash's and Lily's points-of-view, David Levithan writing Dash's and Rachel Cohn writing Lily's. Dash is smart, in his word, "bookish." My teenaged self would have admired him from a distance, too intimidated to do anything so bold as talk to him. One of my favorite things about Dash is that he dreams of owning the complete, hardcover, 20-volume OED. So do I, Dash, so do I! Lily is loveable and awkward, and she makes absolutely delicious cookies. I liked both characters and was worried about what would happen if they met. Something that Dash says about meaning describes his and Lily's situation.

...I don't think meaning is something that can be explained. You have to understand it on your own. It's like when you're starting to read. First, you learn the letters. Then, once you know what sounds the letters make, you use them to sound out words. You know that c-a-t leads to cat and d-o-g leads to dog. But then you have to make that extra leap, to understand that the word, the sound, the "cat" is connected to an actual cat, and that "dog" is connected to an actual dog. It's that leap, that understanding, that leads to meaning....
...in the same way that a kid can realize what "c-a-t" means, I think we can find the truths that live behind our words.

Dash and Lily are reading and liking each other on the pages of the red Molskine, but they might be making leaps to false actualities. Will they be happy when they discover "the truths that live behind [their] words"? Here are some of their words that I liked.

My hands were starting to shake a little. Because I hadn't known that I knew these things. Just having a notebook to write them in, and having someone to write them to, made them all rise to the surface.
* * * * * * *
The Strand proudly proclaims itself as home to eighteen miles of books. I have no idea how this is calculated....Were there eighteen miles of shelves? No one knew. We all just took the bookstore at its word, because if you couldn't trust a bookstore, what could you trust?
* * * * * * *
She led me into a room that could only be called a parlor. The drapery was so thick and the furniture so cloaked that I half expected to find Sherlock Holmes thumb-wrestling with Jane Austen in the corner.
* * * * * * *
I am not dangerous. Only the stories are dangerous. Only the fictions we create, especially when they become expectations.

Hmmm. I think these are all Dash quotes. I can't help it. I really like him!

Although this book is mostly about Dash and Lily, it is also a little about the Strand. This whole book is a little tribute to New York City. I've been to the Strand, and it is wonderful.

Book group 2 and e-readers

This post is about nothing in particular and a few things in general.

I'm in two book groups. This can sometimes lead to reading jams.

Tonight Book Group 2 met after our annual January hiatus. Book Group 2 is a boring name. I'm going to call it Book Group Austen. It's made up of women from church, usually four of us. Oh, I'm going to give the others Austen names! Elinor and Catherine have young grandchildren, and Jane is a few years younger than me with four cute kids. I'm the singleton, so when the others talk about parenting, I just smile, nod and tune out. Tonight we went over our reading list for the year, which led to talking about other good books we wanted to read. Elinor showed us a book she'd picked up at a used book sale: Lady-in-Waiting by Rosemary Sutcliff, about the wife of Sir Walter Raleigh, which sounded interesting. My other book group had read one of Sutcliff's YA novels; I didn't know she'd written for adults too. Catherine is reading Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz and thinks she'll suggest it for our reading next year. I'd seen the book at a (Polish-speaking) friend's house but hadn't known anything about it. I like that this group has introduced me to older books I'd never have picked up on my own.

Tonight we spent the first 15 minutes or so talking about our e-readers. There's one Kindle and three Nooks among us. The Kindle owner bought hers first, a couple of years ago I think, and I just bought my Nook a few weeks ago. The others really like their devices. I'm still deciding. The instant gratification aspect is fantastic, and I really don't have room for more paper books, but I just like reading real books. I like the feel and smell of paper and the sound of turning pages. And when I go back to re-read parts, it's so much easier to flip through the pages to find the spot I want than to swipe through the pages electronically or try to guess the page number. I also like taking notes in a real book. Handwriting just conveys more feeling and personality than typed letters. Maybe a few months from now I'll be writing a new blog post on how much I love my e-reader, but at the moment I still prefer real books.

Next month's read: Emma by Jane Austen. I've read it before, of course, but am happy to read it again.

The Shattering by Karen Healey

Keri lives in Summerton, an idyllic beach town in New Zealand where the locals all know each other and it never rains between Christmas and New Years. But Keri wants to get out and see more of the world, especially now that her beloved older brother, Jake, is dead. He committed suicide. At least, that's what she thinks until Janna, a friend whose own brother died years before, tells her that both their brothers were murdered, and she's going after the killer. They join forces with Sione, a tourist boy whose brother was also killed. As they figure out a pattern in the murders, narrow down suspects and try to protect the next victim, they discover dark and very dangerous powers at work in their town.

The characters are truly the stars of this book. The story is told from Keri's, Janna's and Sione's views, although Keri (who speaks in first person while the others' chapters are in third) is the principle narrator. Keri is a planner. Beginning at a young age, she has developed plans for various possible catastrophes, from broken arms to earthquakes. She doesn't like when people act in ways she doesn't see as rational. I sympathized with her on this. Janna is a bassist who wants to make it big in the music industry. I was ambivalent about her at the beginning but really liked her by the middle. She doesn't do well in school, but she has great talents outside it. Unlike the girls, Sione didn't get along well with his brother. He was always the weaker, less popular younger brother. He's sweet and sensitive and usually lets fierce, rugby-playing Keri or outgoing, determined Janna take the lead, but he comes into his own by the end. They're very different people, and I liked all three.

I think this is the first book I've read that's set in New Zealand (Lord of the Rings doesn't count!), so it was interesting to get bits of the Summerton culture. [Edit: Duh! The last book I posted about was set in New Zealand. There are some books with unreliable narrators. I hope I'm not becoming the Unreliable Blogger.] There are several issues that come up around the edges of the main mystery. This seems like regular life to me - sometimes these issues can be your central focus, but sometimes they're just one more thing you deal with while you're concentrating on a bigger event. One of those issues is race. Keri is half Maori, I think, and Sione is Samoan but lives in Auckland most of the year. One of Janna's bandmates is Chinese, and the boy she likes is a Japanese exchange student. It's a different mix of races than I'm accustomed to where I live, but the friction is similar.

On Karen Healey's website, she has a brief "What Happened After" section where she speculates on where the characters end up several years later. I liked that. I cared about her characters and was glad to know what she thinks happened to them.

Awards Day!

Today is Newbery Medal Day! Okay, the books I read fall mostly in the Printz age category, but the Newbery is the one I always think of first. For the list of award winners, see the ALA press release.

Despite the fact that the great majority of books I read are Young Adult, I have usually never heard of the Award winners. I'm doing well if I've heard of one or two of the Honor books. This is okay, though, because it means there are even more good books to add to my to-read list. This year's winners, DEAD END IN NORVELT by Jack Gantos (Newbery) and WHERE THINGS COME BACK by John Corey Whaley (Printz), sound very good, and I look forward to reading them. I was glad to see that Maggie Stiefvater's THE SCORPIO RACES received a Printz Honor; it was easily one of my favorite books last year.

And not to leave out the Caldecott Medal, I read one of the Honor books, GRANDPA GREEN by Lane Smith, and it is lovely.

The Other Side of Silence by Margaret Mahy

Hero is the quiet one in a loud, argumentative, brilliant family. Her mother became famous years ago after publishing a book on raising children. Her older sister has just returned after a long absence, with the teenaged son of her former boyfriend in tow. Her older brother stays at home all the time, supposedly working on his thesis. Her younger sister is chatty and boisterous, and her father stays home to care for them all. Hero loves her family but sometimes wants to escape them.

She frequently goes down the street to an old estate where she can roam the pathways in the trees and live in her own world for a while. Then one day the owner of the estate sees her and invites her in, and Hero discovers that neither her home world nor her private world is what she thought it was.

I really really liked Margaret Mahy's writing style. She's insightful, and her language is full of imagery. That is true of many authors, of course, but Mahy has a unique twist. I will be looking for her other books. Here are just a few of the quotes that I took down.

...back then when I was only twelve, I had two lives. The life I lived with my family was my real life, but the tree life--the early-morning life, which I lived before anyone else was up and about--was also my true life even though it was partly invented. Real life is what you are supposed to watch out for, but an invented life, lived truly, can be just as dangerous.

But I would probably have turned into Old Fairy Tales, which was the book everyone read to me when I was small--the book I used for secret advice . . .for divination. Even when I was as old as ten or eleven, I would try to take Old Fairy Tales by surprise, opening it anywhere, pointing with the first finger of my left hand (my fortune-telling finger) and taking advice from the line I found myself pointing at.

Every so often I'd catch a glimpse of the house, its weather-beaten tower standing at the end of the main block like an exclamation mark at the end of a magic word.

Real is what everyone agrees about. True is what you somehow know inside yourself.

My reflection showed briefly in puddles, shrunken now to hand size as I walked by. A muddy ghost with smudgy features was walking with me every step of the way, sole to sole with me. Soul to soul with me!

Booklinks:
~~ This reminds me of THE ONLY ALIEN ON THE PLANET by Kristen D. Randle because both books seem poised to become supernatural but turn out to be sadly realistic.
~~ I actually own a different book that's also called THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE. In Mahy's book, some people think Hero is deaf because she doesn't talk. This other book I have is about the Deaf community.

The Apothecary by Maile Meloy

I think more novels should have pictures. Wait, maybe I don't think that. There is something to be said about letting your imagination determine how high a hill is or whether a character's hair is light or dark brown. On the other hand, sometimes my brain is so concentrated on the story that a picture is helpful. Well, while the debate slogs along in my muddled head, I will say that Ian Schoenherr's black-and-white drawings add a lot to the suspense and mystery of THE APOTHECARY. Most of the illustrations lurk in the background of the chapter ends and beginnings, but there is one full-page spread that hits you in the gut.

Janie, our heroine, begins the story in sunny California, where her parents are screenwriters in Hollywood. But it's the 1950s, her parents are suspected of being Communists, and so the family flees to cold war-ravaged London. Janie's parents are happy working on a BBC production of Robin Hood, but Janie has a little more trouble adjusting.

Then she meets Benjamin, son of the apothecary whose shop is near Janie's flat. The two of them quickly become involved in a dangerous mystery. Because I had no idea where the story was going, I won't say anything else about the plot for fear of being spoilery. But I enjoyed the unexpected (for me) twists and adventures and the surprising new friends.

Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters by Natalie Standiford

I had three books going this week and finished them one right after the other, which has caused something of a bookjam in my blog writing. I'll stick with Natalie Standiford and start with CONFESSIONS OF THE SULLIVAN SISTERS, which was my read-at-home-in-the-evening book. (There was also a lunch book and a before-bed book.) This book didn't move me as much as HOW TO SAY GOODBYE IN ROBOT, but it was fun.

Someone has done Something to seriously disturb the almighty Sullivan matriarch (who is actually called Almighty by her family), and she is threatening to disinherit the whole family unless that person confesses. Because no one knows which crime has brought on this threat, sisters Norrie, Jane and Sassy each submit a written confession to Almighty.

The book begins with Norrie's confession, then goes to Jane's and then to Sassy's. In other books with multiple narrators, I've often become so involved with one narrator that I've wished they could finish telling their side before moving to the next person. Sometimes the narrator switch is jarring, and it takes me a second to adjust to the other person's story. But I got my wish in this book and discovered that there are advantages to the other way after all. After starting Jane's story, I missed Norrie, and I didn't get to find out what happened to her until the very end. Aside from that, though, the format works for this book, because each sister can tell her story uninterrupted. Although the girls are talking about the same stretch of time, I didn't feel that there was any repetition, because each sister has such a different perspective.

The Sullivans are an old, rich, Baltimore clan, and they live in a big house with a tower room that has passed from St. John, the oldest brother, to Sully, the next brother, and now to Norrie. The kids call their mother Ginger and their father Daddy-O. The name Daddy-O makes me giggle. Ginger and the girls go to tea at Almighty's every Tuesday.

Conversation topics at recent teas have been Norrie's upcoming Cotillion and Jane's bad behavior in their all-girl Catholic high school. Norrie has been fast losing interest in Cotillion (and in her escort, the eligible grandson of Almighty's bosom friend) because of a happy grad student she's met in a night speed reading class. Jane starts a blog to reveal all the dastardly deeds of her evil family. And Sassy is pondering her newly developed invincibility that has let her walk away with only bruises after being hit by a car. Twice.

The characters in this book, not just the sisters, are delightful. Almighty's current husband (#5) is a quiet, comforting presence throughout the book, even under sad circumstances. Cassandra, a 5th-grader Sassy is tutoring in math despite her admitted ignorance in the subject, is refreshing and matter-of-fact, and although she doesn't believe Sassy's invincibility theory at first, she is willing to hear Sassy out and add her own opinions.

I also liked Robbie, Norrie's new boyfriend, but he was my one big problem with this book. Party pooperish of me this may be, but I think that 25 is way too old to be dating 17. (Unless you're Colonel Brandon, in which case you can be 35 to Marianne's 17, but that was a very different time.) I realize that age is a somewhat arbitrary standard on which to base behavior, but a line must be drawn somewhere, and in this case, I will side with the law and wish they had waited until Norrie was 18.

How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford

This is my first favorite new read of 2012.

Beatrice has just moved with her parents to Baltimore, where her father will be a professor at Johns Hopkins, her mother will stay home and act more and more oddly, and Bea will attend a private school with only 40 students in her senior class. Thanks to alphabetical chance, Bea Szabo is seated next to Jonah Tate, the boy that her classmates treat like a ghost. Bea tries to be friendly to him, and Jonah introduces her to a late-night call-in radio show, thus beginning a strong, unconventional friendship. Bea and Jonah are more interested in meeting the callers to the radio show (one of whom is from the future, another of whom is holding out hope that Elvis will come back to life and to her) and taking a secret trip to Ocean City than in hanging out with their classmates at repeated parties or going to prom. Trying not to be spoilery here - Jonah discovers something about his past that his father has been hiding from him, and Bea willingly helps him try to sneak around his father to fix it. But it gets too big for Jonah, and even Bea can't help him.

Reading about Bea and Jonah made me think about how conventional I am (something I don't tend to dwell on). Before the move Baltimore, Bea and her mother used to spend their time together dressing up in elaborate costumes and recreating scenes from old movies that Bea would photograph. She and Jonah don't want to go to prom because it just isn't their thing, and they can come up with something to do they'd enjoy so much more. I didn't go to prom either, but if I had, it would have been a big deal to me. If they (Jonah in particular) had gone, they would have been more than bored.

I liked Bea. She seems to be comfortable with herself. She is willing to help Jonah with his risky plans, but she is also more grounded than her mother. She tries to be nice to her classmates but isn't at all concerned with getting the popular ones to like her. Her narrative was easy to read with some humor to leaven the heavy parts.

Experience told me that not many guys were into flat-chested sticks with big round lollipop heads and stringy hair, unless by some miracle that was the regional definition of cute. If so, I hadn't come across that particular region. Mom kept telling me I had to grow into my face, but I knew a euphemism when I heard one.

Jonah, meanwhile, broke my heart. He is a very good friend to Bea, often thoughtful and caring. But when he gets into his trouble, he withdraws into the ghost-like boy he had been before Bea moved in. My staid adult self recognizes that my teenage self would have related to Jonah (not that I had to deal with anything like what he has to). Bea's mother says:

"Jonah always struck me as kind of, I don't know, insubstantial."
"You're wrong," I said. "He has substance. It just flickers off and on."
"Reminds me of somebody else we both know," Mom said. I think she was talking about Dad but, frankly, it could have been anybody.

HOW TO SAY GOODBYE IN ROBOT is a moving book about a relationship that is more than friendship, more than romance, but in the end is unable be saved by just one person or even by the real love of both people.

(Also posted in Goodreads)

Booklinks: I like it when I happen to read books, one soon after the other, that relate to each other somehow. This book has two for me.
~~ At the beginning of the book, Bea names a stray gerbil Goebbels, after one of the Nazis that she has been reading about in THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH, which I read for one of my book groups (okay, I read one-tenth of it - although unexpectedly readable, it's realllly looong).
~~ Bea and Jonah listening to a late-night radio show reminded me of Annabel and Owen in Sarah Dessen's JUST LISTEN, although Owen's show had more obscure music, while the Night Lights in this book had more callers and talking.

Abandon by Meg Cabot

Pierce Oliviera died. While in the Underworld, she met John Hayden, a death deity who wanted her to stay with him, but she escaped. She and her mother have now moved to her mother's hometown on the island Isla Huesos off the coast of Florida. After the disasters that occurred since Pierce was revived, her mother wants them both to make a new start. But John keeps appearing, as do the disasters, and Pierce must figure out what is happening and what her role is in it.

Meg Cabot can certainly write an engaging story, and you can depend on her for a smart heroine and a sensitive/vulnerable hero who looks great in tight T-shirts. I stayed up late last night reading ABANDON and took extra time at lunch to read more. This is the first of a series, and I want to find out what happens next. I'm hoping Pierce's cousin Alex and new friend Kayla have bigger roles in the next book.