Girl Detective

Friday afternoon, and concentration is hard to come by. I know that a list seems like the LCD (lowest common denomiator) of blog entries, but I wouldn’t post on reading and watching lists if I didn’t think they had merit. When I read weblogs over time, I am able to determine similarities in media likes and dislikes. I pay attention to those people whose tastes run similarly to mine, especially those people who have more time and money than do I to more thoroughly explore what’s out there. I also have (mostly) stopped making to-do lists of books and movies, and instead rely upon an accumulation of recommendations to make something stand out in my memory unaided.

Is anyone out there besides me doing a 50 book or 50 movie challenge for a year, or am I talking to myself? I know that for many of you, 50 isn’t much. For me, though, as my son Drake approaches his second birthday, it’s meant reclaiming and re-integrating into my life things I love, like books and movies. I hope that I’ll trounce both goals handily, but even if I squeak in close, it will be a vast improvement over last year.

19. What You Wear Can Change Your Life by Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine. I’m a fan of both the BBC and TLC versions of this show. This is an easy, breezy book that nonetheless contains a lot of practical advice on beauty and fashion. Woodall and Constantine are the sometimes fearless models of what not to wear, though they are vindicated in the more flattering “do” shots as well. It includes photos of them pregnant, and post-baby with soft tummies. I was reminded that looking after one’s appearance is a supreme form of self-validation. Letting things go on the outside usually means that one’s esteem is low on the inside. With canny advice like theirs, dressing and looking well can be a rewarding challenge. I noticed a few oopsies in the book, like the repeated misspelling of the word “fuchsia,” and one photo that was used to illustrate both do and don’t for blush. An additional quibble I have is that the book limits its fashion advice to the particular foibles of Woodall and Constantine. Together they do have most of the common body complaints that women try to dress around, yet Woodall’s physique is far from common. She has short legs and a cushy bum, but she’s 5′10″, so while a dress over pants looks well on her, those of us of average height can’t carry it off.

20. Lying Awake by Mark Salzman. An absolute gem of a book, whose story is made more beautiful still by the addition of several woodcut illustrations. A cloistered nun takes strength and inspiration from her spiritual visions. When she learns what might be causing them, she must wrestle with whether to give them up. Spare, moving and lovely.

21. Carnet de Voyage by Craig Thompson. This is a travel journal of Thompson’s three-month trek through Europe. The drawings are compelling, and Thompson is a self-aware and modest narrator, apologizing more than once for the slight nature of the work. It cannot compare to the strength and power of his two previous graphic novels, but it’s not meant to. This is an enjoyable and beautiful travel memoir, but if you haven’t read either of his previous novels, I urge you to seek out Goodbye, Chunky Rice and Blankets.

I followed a Bookslut entry link today about teen chicklit. This seems strangely familiar, I thought, even before getting to the damning quote by Sarah Mlynowski about wanting to be in the same company as Christopher Pike and the Sweet Valley books.

Oh, yeah, I have read this before, and linked to it in this entry on crossover books, but the Houston Chronicle no longer has the earlier article available. The original link came from Bookslut, here.

The Star Tribune piece notes that there is a growing market for teen chicklit. What it fails to note is that while it’s popular and selling well, it’s complete crap, following a formula that teen-fiction expert Michael Cart nailed about ten years ago in his excellent critical analysis From Romance to Realism: 50 years of Growth and Change in Young Adult Literature, 1996, which also happens to be book #18 in my 50 Book Challenge for the year.

Take one teenage protagonist (fifteen or younger–usually younger); give her/him a story to tell in her/his first-person voice. Keep the number of other characters to a bare minimum and develop their identities sketchily (no room for complexity, you know). Limit the story’s time span to a year or less. Fold in an undistinguished setting in a sentence or two and don’t refer to it thereafter. Add a lot of pop culture references and brand names. Stir briskly–no time for reflection or introspection–using lots of dialogue and a simple, unadorned, straightforward, colloquial style. Keep it short–no more than 200 pages; kids have short attention spans, you know. Hang the plot on a problem that can–after lots of hints of impending doom–be resolved satisfactorily by the protagonist without adult interference. The experience will change the protagonist forever–and for the better, please. Because downbeat endings are definitely not welcome. Cook until half-baked. (p. 243-4).

If you’re interested in teen fiction, ignore those books cited in the Star Tribune article and instead pick up any of Michael Cart’s anthologies, three of which I wrote about here. They contain well-written, provocative works that eschew the above formula.

13: Empire Falls by Richard Russo. Boy, they don’t just hand the Pulitzer out to hacks, do they? This 483-dense-paged book took me a whopping twenty days to read, but was well worth it. Russo’s characterizations are so lifelike they’re almost spooky. He skillfully juggles a huge panoply of characters, all of whom are complex, intriguing and believable. There are many jumps back and forth in time, but his narrative is so firmly anchored that I never felt a jot of confusion, even when reading at my most fatigued and distracted. Utterly satisfying and highly recommended.

6: Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. A graphic novel memoir of a childhood in 1980s Iran. The iconic black and white art effectively conveys a girl’s-eye view. By turns funny, thoughtful and tragic. For more information, see this Bookslut interview with the author.
7: The Best American Non-required Reading 2002 edited by Michael Cart and Dave Eggers. A high-caliber collection containing both fiction and non-. I enjoyed a high percentage of the entries, uncommon in a collection, particularly “Stop that Girl” by Elizabeth McKenzie, now part of her recently published novel of the same title, which was reviewed here at Conversational Reading. CR also did a review of a review of STG.
8: Doing It by Melvin Burgess. An English boy coming-of-age novel and the basis for the likely-to-be-cancelled series life as we know it. Funny, likeable characters with distinct voices who are realistically yearning for and agonizing over sex.
9. Rush Hour Volume 1: Sin edited by Michael Cart. Again, a very strong collection. I was mesmerized by Terry Davis’ “The Silk Ball,” which interwove Cambodian theology with a tale of modern military violence.
10: Rush Hour Volume 2: Bad Boys edited by Michael Cart. I went to see Michael Cart at a conference, which is why he is well-represented here. Yet again, a strong collection. I found “Joaquin Years” by Edward Averett haunting, and was intrigued by Robert Lipsyte’s essay on jock culture.
11: Girl by Blake Nelson. A coming-of-age novel that was published to an adult market in the mid 90s but featured a high-school senior protagonist. I skipped this book when I saw it the first time, but picked it up after reading a recommendation at Avenging Sybil, a blog that focuses on sexual themes in YA literature. Girl is somewhat dated, but engaging, and Nelson (who is male) writes a believable girl narrator in Andrea. I found the characters emotionally thin, especially Andrea; I don’t know if this was deliberate. Parts of Girl were previously published in the late, lamented Sassy magazine, including the very strong chapters in which Andrea works at a summer camp.
12: The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler, which I previously wrote about here.

2: Yolen, Jane, Briar Rose. New York: Tor, 1992. Extremely well-done fairy tale interwoven with Holocaust historical fiction that neatly avoids the usual cliches.

3: Thomas, Rob, Rats Saw God. New York: Simon Pulse, 1996. An insightful boy coming-of-age novel, including sex, by the creator of the television series Veronica Mars.

4: Vaughn, Brian K. (writer), Harris, Tony, (penciller), Feister, Tom (inker), Ex Machina Volume 1: The First Hundred Days. La Jolla, CA: Wildstorm Productions, 2005. Collection of the first five issues of new comic-book series about Mitchell Hundred, who acquires strange powers and goes on to become the mayor of New York City. Funny, intriguing, fabulous art.

5: Vaughn, Brian K. (writer), Guerra, Pia/Parlov, Goran (pencillers), Marzan, Jr., Jose (inker), Y the Last Man Volume 4: Safeword. New York: DC Comics, 2004. Latest collection of compelling comic book series about Yorick, the only male on the planet after a plague wipes out the rest.

I recommend them all.

I am a recent convert to Blog of a Bookslut, which has links and notes to all sorts of literary goings-on by Michael Schaub and Jessa Crispin. At the beginning of the year, Crispin noted that there was a 50 book challenge for 2005:

“The idea, of course, is to read 50 books in 2005 and blog about them either in this livejournal community or on your own blog.

I thought, “What a great idea,” and have spent six weeks trying to get around to it. I’m doing the last six weeks retroactively. I’ll try to keep the reviews short; I’ll say it in a sentence, if I can.

1: , New York: Tor Books, 1989. A swordfighting fantasy in which men sleep with women and men, but there isn’t a word for it; it’s just what people do. Quick and fun, but not without literary merit.