Comics and Graphic Novel/Memoir Round-Up

November 9, 2015 |

When I began working in libraries, comics and graphic novels puzzled me to no end. I didn’t know what to get or how to stay on top of things, and even more challenging for me was not understanding why I could or could not acquire certain titles. It wasn’t until I took a continuing education class in comics and graphic novels for the library, offered through the University of Wisconsin’s LIS program, that it all made sense to me. I’d always been a casual reader, but I’d primarily read graphic memoirs; being forced to read beyond that really helped me learn that there’s a lot out there that’s totally up my alley, and it taught me the most basic and most crucial component about comics: there’s a difference between single issues and trades. For comics readers, this is a no brainer. But for those who aren’t, it’s this little clarification that makes the entire process of finding, acquiring, and reading comics so much easier.

I tend to read comics in trade format. This means multiple issues of a comic are bound together into a larger, more study edition. These are the ones you can find in most standard chain bookstores. Not everything ends up in trade, and trades come out after a run of singles are out. Single issues are, as the term suggests, one-off issues. These are released on a schedule, and they’re just one installment of a larger comic story arc. Think of it sort of like a serialized novel in a magazine. Single issues are flimsy and really not great for library purchasing, as they tend to be made of even cheaper, less durable material than a standard magazine is.

Besides wanting to make that distinction for anyone approaching comics without the familiarity, I thought it worthwhile because this post is a round-up of my recent comic reads. Most of what I read, again, are in the trade format; however, a couple weeks ago I picked up a single issue of a brand new comic and loved it to bits and pieces — enough that I’ll keep buying it in single issues to stay with the story as it progresses. It’s kind of fun to have that anticipation.

All of these comics are fine for teens. Some are more graphic/violent than others, but they’ll all have teen appeal in some capacity. More, and the thing that excites me most about my recent comic binge, is that they all feature fantastically drawn female characters (and yes, I mean drawn in all senses of the word there).

Trade

Lady Killer by Joelle Jones and Jamie S. Rich

This one is going to appeal to readers who love noir and who are totally all-in on a story about a woman who murders for hire. It’s completely compelling and engaging and a big reason is because it messes with what we think about when it comes to hitmen.

But more — and the thing that made this particular comic really work for me — was that it’s stylized in a very vintage manner. The cover image is pretty perfectly representative of the comic as a whole. Josie is a housewife and a mother, and her job doing the dirty work for others is unknown to her family. She looks one way but the actions tell a completely different story, and it’s this tension of image and perception against reality that make this unique and a lot of fun.

I have a hard time finding dark comedy in my reading that works for me, but Lady Killer absolutely killed it. Josie is unapologetically violent woman who is “just doing her job” during a time when that was totally unacceptable. And realistically? It’s still totally unacceptable, so the social commentary on gender roles here resonates strong. I’m eagerly awaiting more in this story because there’s so much here to juice. You can check out some of the panels here.

You need no backstory, set-up, or history to jump into this comic. It’s brand new, and this first trade will get you into it right away.

Black Widow #1 by Nathan Edmondson and Phil Noto

I’ve actually got all three of the Black Widow trades on my shelf, but I’ve only had an opportunity to read the first one. It was far from disappointing, and it was absolutely worth the effort it took to find — for some reason, snagging the first trade of this one was a challenge, as it was sold out everywhere for a long time.

Natasha Romanov, aka Black Widow, for those who don’t know, is a member of The Avengers, and more, she’s a former KGB assassin who is out to seek atonement for it. Readers who have zero knowledge of The Avengers, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., or Black Widow can absolutely jump in on this first trade to get the entire story. You’ll get the arc immediately, and you’ll find out the history and the current space of Black Widow right here.

What’s really great about the first trade is that it’s entirely about Natasha. She’s not sharing the spotlight with any other people at this point. It’s violent, it’s rough, and we’re immediately thrown into her unstable world and learn why it is she lives with her fists raised.

The story is compelling and really a solid superhero to start with for the uninitiated, but what really sings in this is the art. It’s gorgeous — Noto does a spectacular job using the pages, of using color, and of rendering the heroine here on her own strong terms. So many people have trouble with the idea of “strong female character” as a descriptor, but Nato creates that in his art. In a culture that continues to erase or “forget” about the female characters in superheroland, it’s refreshing to see Black Widow standing here on her own and doing so powerfully. I’m excited to see her story continue, which is why I bought the next two trades immediately after finishing this. I never thought I’d be interested in a superhero movie, but when a Black Widow film happens, I will absolutely want to see it because her story is so fascinating.

Single

Paper Girls #1 by Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, and Matt Wilson

One issue of this was not enough. I’m chomping at the bit for #2 because this introduction to a new story of rad newspaper delivery girls in the 1980s hooked me immediately and ended in a wonderful cliffhanger.

The night after Halloween, a group of 12-year-old newspaper girls discover what appears to be a machine created in honor of the 50th anniversary of War of the Worlds. This is the cliffhanger, but the big takeaway from the comic isn’t just the fact it’s a compelling hook, but it’s wildly feminist. There are instances of hateful language used, but it’s called out and expressed as inappropriate, and more, the girls are there working side by side in their delivery.

The dialog in this issue works, as the girls all sound like teenagers. We don’t get a terrible amount of development, but that’s because this is still the first issue, so there’s a lot of room for growth. I think that’s what makes this a really promising new series — Vaughan sets up a lot of space for these girls and their arcs to grow and mold, but we know, too, that they’re going to be smart but not too-smart-for-12-year-old-girls, which is a thing I find distracting and inauthentic in stories.

The art is, as the cover shows, a lot of fun. It’s definitely stylized and it’s definitely 80s-tastic, but that’s part of the appeal. And the references and allusions are a blast:

I’m ready for issue #2, which will hit comic stores later this month.

Graphic Memoir

A Year Without Mom by Dasha Tokstikova

Rounding out this round-up of recent comics reads is a graphic memoir that I didn’t necessarily love, but that I see the appeal and interest for.

It’s the early 1990s in Russia, during the Cold War, and Dasha’s mother decides that in order to better herself and her own education, she needs to leave Russia for America for a year. Dasha is living with her grandmother during this time, and we see what a year in this very specific time and place look like for her as a young girl.

There’s friendship squabbles, crushes, tension with family, and then, of course, the Russian politics of the early 90s. It’s very relatable, which I think is the key selling point of this particular memoir — while we know that there’s a lot of historical baggage (which is underexplored here, in part because it’s from the perspective of Dasha’s 12-year-old self and in part because there “grounding” in this book is about a year without mom, not the year without mom while the government is unstable), the take away is that Dasha’s life isn’t dissimilar from any other 12-year-old in the world. She’s on that precipice of being a child and being a teenager, and it’s the absence of her mother that causes her more challenges than normal. I really wish we’d gotten more of the political climate here, though, because I’m not as familiar with this time and place as I’d like to be, and I suspect this will hold even more true for today’s tween readers.

More, though, I found some of the choices in design on this completely frustrating — why would you lay black text on gray coloring? It’s easy to overlook and miss and it’s even more challenging to read. I’m also curious why so many reviews don’t point this out. It’s a flaw, not a feature. I think the lack of color use in this memoir is effective, particularly for capturing place, setting, and mood, but the choices in layout were not reader friendly, especially for anyone who may be less familiar with reading graphic stories. There’s not an immersive experience to be had here.

This slice-of-life graphic memoir is worth a read, though it’s one you don’t have to buy or own because the challenges don’t make it entirely stand out. I do think it’s interesting that it’s another title set during the Cold War in Russia, a trend that’s popped up a few times in recent YA. I think it speaks to the authors more than it might to today’s teen readers, if only because the understanding of what growing up with that climate means might be a bit lost on them.

Get Genrefied: YA Memoirs

January 8, 2015 |

While we’ve been putting together our monthly “get genrefied” guides over the last two years, it’s been neat to see what trends in publishing have emerged and which have subsided a bit. Without doubt, one of the biggest trends in the last two years is one which we aren’t as familiar with and one we don’t talk much about: young adult non-fiction. The growth in YA non-fiction can, of course, be partially attributed to the implementation of Common Core. But it’s also worth noting that because YA non-fiction has gotten so great in the last few years that more and more of it has been published.

One subsection within YA non-fiction that has seen tremendous growth in the last few years is the YA memoir. These are written for teens, about an experience by the author in their teens, regardless of whether or not they’re in their teens as they’re writing or it they’re adults reflecting upon a teen experience. Though it’s arguable whether or not memoirs are a genre per se, let’s dig into this category of YA.

Definition and History

What’s a “memoir” and how does it differ from “autobiography?”

This isn’t a dumb question at all, and it’s one that people are often confused about because the terms are often used interchangeably. Even major retailers lump the two together, even though they’re not the same thing.

Memoir, by definition, covers a specific period of time or experience within a person’s life. An autobiography, on the other hand, covers an entire lifespan. Wikipedia actually puts it most succinctly, noting that autobiographies are of a life while memoirs are from a life. Both of these differ from biography, which is a story of someone’s life as told by a third party.

Memoirs have huge appeal for teen readers and they always have. Anyone who has worked in a library knows that books like Dave Pelzer’s A Child Called It is perennially popular with teen readers, especially among younger teens. Other memoirs, like Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone and Jeannette Walls’s The Glass Castle, are popular among teen readers and are frequently on reading lists in classrooms or for enrichment. There is something appealing about reading someone’s true story, and while these three books, along with many other sought-after memoirs, are published as adult non-fiction, they have tremendous crossover appeal. But with the explosion of memoirs geared directly toward teen readers in the last few years, the options for what teens can pick up and relate to continue to get better and better.

Very little has been written about YA memoirs specifically, likely because it’s become an emerging category of YA non-fiction, rather than something that’s always been specifically geared toward those readers. It’s not just adult books that are being rewritten and adapted for a teen audience (which we’ve written about before), but it’s a category all its own.

Taking a look back at the memoirs written for teens in the early 2000s, it’s interesting to see that the bulk — and those which have remained around — were written by well-known and popular young adult authors. Walter Dean Myers, Ned Vizzini, Jack Gantos, and Chris Crutcher all wrote YA memoirs: Bad Boy, Teen Angst? Naaah…, Hole in My Life, and King of the Mild Frontier respectively. More recently, though, it’s new voices that are lending their stories to YA audiences. These are authors who don’t already have a foot in the category or who may otherwise not be known to teen readers at all.

Resources

Since YA memoirs are an emerging category within YA non-fiction, there aren’t many resources available. Seeking these books out isn’t the easiest, as YA non-fiction has itself been difficult to seek out more broadly. As always, Edelweiss proves to be one of the best resources, though it’s also one of the most time-consuming: even with good searching, finding the non-fiction for teens can be challenging.

With the change in YALSA’s awards and selection list honors a few years ago, non-fiction become deemphasized. The “Best Fiction for Young Adults” list used to be the “Best Books for Young Adults” list, and it included both fiction and non-fiction; now it’s fiction only. Part of the change, of course, was to help guide people toward one of the best resources for finding YA non-fiction: the Excellence in Non-Fiction Award (ENYA). Though it covers the broad range of non-fiction titles published for YA readers, it does and has included memoirs on its lists.

The ENYA isn’t the only YALSA resource featuring non-fiction, though. The Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers list also includes non-fiction titles, some of which may include memoirs. Likewise, the Great Graphic Novels list includes non-fiction, too. Since memoirs can be rendered in comic form, this is a really valuable resource for finding those titles. Of course, non-fiction of any flavor is as eligible for the Printz award and the Morris award as fiction.

Beyond those lists and the use of Edelweiss, there aren’t many resources available for finding YA non-fiction and even fewer for YA memoirs. Perusing the awards of other organizations, it’s interesting to see that YA non-fiction isn’t even a category in some cases. For example, the International Reading Association designates awards for primary non-fiction and intermediate non-fiction, but they limit their YA honors to fiction only. Perhaps as non-fiction becomes more pervasive in YA — and again, its growth has been remarkable in the last two to three years alone — more acknowledgement and more tools will become available for finding high quality stories and matching them with teen readers.

Books

Because trying to include crossover titles in this list would make it really long, I’m sticking (mostly) to memoirs that were published for a YA readership. I’ve limited the list further to those titles out in the last 5-7 years, as well as forthcoming titles worth having on your radar now. As always, descriptions come from WorldCat, and any other additions are welcome in the comments. These are all memoirs, as opposed to autobiographies. In some cases, there’s not an easy distinction or it becomes blurred and fuzzy (as in the Earl title), but I’ve included it here anyway.

Model by Cheryl Diamond: Presents the true story of one teen’s attempt to break into New York’s modeling industry at the age of fourteen, where a career-altering event changed her life and nearly ruined her shot at her dream.

Positive by Paige Rawl A teenager’s memoir of the experinces of bullying, being HIV positive and surviving the experiences to become a force for positive change in this world.

Rapture Practice by Aaron Hartzler: Aaron Hartzler grew up in a home where he was taught that at any moment the Rapture could happen — that Jesus might come down in the twinkling of an eye and scoop Aaron and his whole family up to Heaven. As a kid, he was thrilled by the idea that every moment of every day might be his last one on Earth. But as Aaron turns sixteen, he finds himself more attached to his earthly life and curious about all the things his family forsakes for the Lord. He begins to realize he doesn’t want the Rapture to happen just yet — not before he sees his first movie, stars in the school play, or has his first kiss. Eventually Aaron makes the plunge from conflicted do-gooder to full-fledged teen rebel. Whether he’s sneaking out, making out, or playing hymns with a hangover, Aaron learns a few lessons that can’t be found in the Bible. He discovers that the best friends aren’t always the ones your mom and dad approve of, the girl of your dreams can just as easily be the boy of your dreams, and the tricky part about believing is that no one can do it for you. In this coming-of-age memoir, Hartzler recalls his teenage journey to become the person he wanted to be, without hurting the family that loved him.

Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter: Ashley spent nine years in foster care after being taken away from her mother. She endured many caseworkers, moving from school to school and manipulative, humiliating and abusive treatment from one foster family. See how she survives and eventually thrives against the odds.

Three More Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter (May 5): In the sequel to the New York Times bestselling memoir Three Little Words, Ashley Rhodes-Courter expands on life beyond the foster care system, the joys and heartbreak with a family she’s created, and her efforts to make peace with her past. (Description via Goodreads)

Smile for the Camera by Kelle James: The author relates her experiences after she left an abusive home at sixteen and traveled to New York City to pursue a career as a model.

Rock ‘N Roll Soldier by Dean Ellis Kohler: Dean Ellis Kohler, aspiring rock star, is drafted and sent to Vietnam, where he forms a rock ‘n’ roll band at the behest of his Captain.

The Pregnancy Project by Gaby Rodriguez: In this book, Rodriguez shares her experience growing up in the shadow of low expectations, reveals how she was able to fake her own pregnancy, and reveals all that she learned from the experience. But more than that, Gaby’s story is about fighting stereotypes, and how one girl found the strength to come out from the shadow of low expectations to forge a bright future for herself.

The Year We Disappeared by Cylin Busby and John Busby: Cylin and John Busby share the challenges they faced after their family was forced into hiding to protect themselves from a killer who had already shot John, a police officer, and was determined to finish the job.

Rethinking Normal by Katie Rain Hill: In her unique, generous, and affecting voice, nineteen-year-old Katie Hill shares her personal journey of undergoing gender reassignment. Have you ever worried that you’d never be able to live up to your parents’ expectations? Have you ever imagined that life would be better if you were just invisible? Have you ever thought you would do anything–anything–to make the teasing stop? Katie Hill had and it nearly tore her apart. Katie never felt comfortable in her own skin. She realized very young that a serious mistake had been made; she was a girl who had been born in the body of a boy. Suffocating under her peers’ bullying and the mounting pressure to be “normal,” Katie tried to take her life at the age of eight years old. After several other failed attempts, she finally understood that “Katie”–the girl trapped within her–was determined to live. In this first-person account, Katie reflects on her pain-filled childhood and the events leading up to the life-changing decision to undergo gender reassignment as a teenager. She reveals the unique challenges she faced while unlearning how to be a boy and shares what it was like to navigate the dating world and experience heartbreak for the first time in a body that matched her gender identity. Told in an unwaveringly honest voice, Rethinking Normal is a coming-of-age story about transcending physical appearances and redefining the parameters of “normalcy” to embody one’s true self.

Some Assembly Required by Arin Andrews: Seventeen-year-old Arin Andrews shares all the hilarious, painful, and poignant details of undergoing gender reassignment as a high school student in this winning teen memoir

The Boy on the Wooden Box by Leon Leyson: The biography of Leon Leyson, the only memoir published by a former Schindler’s List child.

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai: I Am Malala. This is my story. Malala Yousafzai was only ten years old when the Taliban took control of her region. They said music was a crime. They said women weren’t allowed to go to the market. They said girls couldn’t go to school. Raised in a once-peaceful area of Pakistan transformed by terrorism, Malala was taught to stand up for what she believes. So she fought for her right to be educated. And on October 9, 2012, she nearly lost her life for the cause: She was shot point-blank while riding the bus on her way home from school. No one expected her to survive. Now Malala is an international symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize nominee. In this Young Readers Edition of her bestselling memoir, which includes exclusive photos and material, we hear firsthand the remarkable story of a girl who knew from a young age that she wanted to change the world — and did. Malala’s powerful story will open your eyes to another world and will make you believe in hope, truth, miracles and the possibility that one person — one young person — can inspire change in her community and beyond.

Laughing at My Nightmare by Shane Burcaw: With acerbic wit … Shane Burcaw describes the challenges he faces as a twenty-one-year-old with spinal muscular atrophy. From awkward handshakes to having a girlfriend and everything in between, Shane handles his situation with humor and a ‘you-only-live-once’ perspective on life. While he does talk about everyday issues that are relatable to teens, he also offers an eye-opening perspective on what it is like to have a life-threatening disease.

This Star Won’t Go Out by Esther Earl: A memoir told through the journals, letters, and stories of young cancer patient Esther Earl.

Little Fish by Ramsey Beyer: Written in an autobiographical style with artwork, this book shows the challenges of being a young person facing the world on your own for the very first time and the unease – as well as excitement – that comes along with that challenge. (This WorldCat description is not good — this is a memoir that mixes narrative with lists, ephemera, and art).

Tomboy by Liz Prince: Eschewing female stereotypes throughout her early years and failing to gain acceptance on the boys’ baseball team, Liz learns to embrace her own views on gender as she comes of age, in an anecdotal graphic novel memoir.

How I Made it to Eighteen (A Mostly True Story) by Tracey White: How do you know if you’re on the verge of a nervous breakdown? For seventeen-year-old Stacy Black, it all begins with the smashing of a window. After putting her fist through the glass, she checks into a mental hospital. Stacy hates it there but despite herself slowly realizes she has to face the reasons for her depression to stop from self-destructing. Based on the author’s experiences, How I Made it to Eighteen is a frank portrait of what it’s like to struggle with self-esteem, body image issues, drug addiction, and anxiety.

Tweak by Nic Sheff: The author details his immersion in a world of hardcore drugs, revealing the mental and physical depths of addiction, and the violent relapse one summer in California that forever changed his life, leading him down the road to recovery.

We All Fall Down by Nic Sheff: Sheff writes candidly about stints at in-patient rehab facilities, devastating relapses, and hard-won realizations about what it means to be a young person living with addiction.

We Should Hang Out Sometime by Josh Sundquist: Why was [Paralympic ski racer and cancer survivor] Josh still single? To find out, he tracked down the girls he had tried to date and asked them straight up: what went wrong? The results of Josh’s semiscientific, wholly hilarious investigation are captured here: disastrous Putt-Putt date involving a backward prosthetic foot, to his introduction to CFD (Close Fast Dancing), to a misguided ‘grand gesture’ at a Miss America pageant, this story is about looking for love–or at least a girlfriend–in all the wrong places.

The Bite of Mango by Mariatu Kamara: When Mariatu set out for a neighborhood village in Sierra Leone, she was kidnapped and tortured, and both of her hands cut off. She turned to begging to survive. This heart-rending memoir is a testament to her courage and resilience. Today she is a UNICEF Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict.

The Burn Journals by Brent Runyon: Brent Runyon was fourteen years old when he set himself on fire. In this book he describes that suicide attempt and his recovery over the following year. He takes us into the Burn Unit in a children₂s hospital and through painful burn care and skin-grafting procedures. Then to a rehabilitation hospital, for intensive physical, occupational, and psychological therapy. And then finally back home, to the frightening prospect of entering high school. But more importantly, Runyon takes us into his own mind. He shares his thoughts and hopes and fears with such unflinching honesty that we understand₇with a terrible clarity₇what it means to want to kill yourself and how it feels to struggle back toward normality. Intense, exposed, insightful, The Burn Journals is a deeply personal story with universal reach. It is impossible to look away. Impossible to remain unmoved.

Ghosts of War by Ryan Smithson: Ryan Smithson joined the Army Reserve when he was seventeen. Two years later, he was deployed to Iraq as an Army engineer. In this extraordinary and harrowing memoir, readers march along one GI’s tour of duty. Smithson avoids writing either prowar propaganda or an antimilitary polemic, providing instead a fascinating, often humorous-and occasionally devastating-account of the motivations and life of a contemporary soldier.

Popular by Maya Van Wagenen: A touchingly honest, candidly hysterical memoir from breakout teen author Maya Van Wagenen. Stuck at the bottom of the social ladder at “pretty much the lowest level of people at school who aren’t paid to be here,” Maya Van Wagenen decided to begin a unique social experiment: spend the school year following a 1950s popularity guide, written by former teen model Betty Cornell. Can curlers, girdles, Vaseline, and a strand of pearls help Maya on her quest to be popular? The real-life results are painful, funny, and include a wonderful and unexpected surprise-meeting and befriending Betty Cornell herself. Told with humor and grace, Maya’s journey offers readers of all ages a thoroughly contemporary example of kindness and self-confidence.

Soul Surfer by Bethany Hamilton: Bethany Hamilton, a teenage surfer lost her arm in a shark attack off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii. Not even the loss of her arm keeps her from returning to surfing, the sport she loves.

To Timbuktu by Casey Scieszka and Steven Weinberg: Casey and Steven met in Morocco, moved to China then went all the way to Timbuktu. This illustrated travel memoir tells the story of their first two years out of college spent teaching English, making friends across language barriers, researching, painting, and learning to be themselves wherever they are.

A List of Things That Didn’t Kill Me by Jason Schmidt: In his memoir, Jason Kovacs tells the story of growing up with an abusive father, who contracted HIV and ultimately died of AIDS when Jason was a teenager

Elena Vanishing by Elena and Clare B. Dunkle (May 19): Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia. Told entirely from Elena’s perspective over a five-year period and co-written with her mother, award-winning author Clare B. Dunkle, Elena’s memoir is a fascinating and intimate look at a deadly disease, and a must read for anyone who knows someone suffering from an eating disorder. (Description via Goodreads).

I Will Always Write Back by Caitlin Alifirenka and Martin Ganda (April 14): It started as an assignment. Everyone in Caitlin’s class wrote to an unknown student somewhere in a distant place. All the other kids picked countries like France or Germany, but when Caitlin saw Zimbabwe written on the board, it sounded like the most exotic place she had ever heard of–so she chose it.
Martin was lucky to even receive a pen pal letter. There were only ten letters, and forty kids in his class. But he was the top student, so he got the first one.

That letter was the beginning of a correspondence that spanned six years and changed two lives.

In this compelling dual memoir, Caitlin and Martin recount how they became best friends –and better people–through letters. Their story will inspire readers to look beyond their own lives and wonder about the world at large and their place in it. (Description via Goodreads).

No Summit Out of Sight by Jordan Romero: The story of Jordan Romero, who at the age of 13 became the youngest person ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest. At age 15, he reached the summits of the world’s 7 highest mountains.

Hidden Girl by Shyima Hall The author, Shyima Hall, was eight when her parents sold her into slavery. In Egypt’s capitol city of Cairo, she lived with a wealthy family and serve them eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. When she was ten, her captors moved to Orange County, California, and smuggled Shyima with them. Two years later, an anonymous call from a neighbor brought about the end of Shyima’s servitude– but her journey to true freedom was far from over. Now a US citizen, she regularly speaks out about human trafficking and candidly reveals how she overcame her harrowing circumstances.

Religion & Religious Memoirs: Reviews From the OBCB List

February 11, 2014 |

Since the Outstanding Books for the College Bound (OBCB) list is finally live and active, I’m really excited to talk about the books I read this last year and loved. I couldn’t intentionally blog about them last year — though certainly because the scope of our charge was so large, it was impossible to know which titles I had blogged about would show up as potential considerations — so now that I can, I’m hoping it’ll encourage readers to pick up something completely new or consider recommending titles to other readers that may not have otherwise crossed your radar.

I served on two subcommittees of OBCB, reading those titles which fell under the category of Arts and Humanities and those which fell under the Social Science category. I nominated and read and talked about titles in other categories, but the almost fifty titles in my subcommittee lists are all ones I did get a chance to read (with one or two exceptions).

Rather than go down the list and talk about the titles in that order, I thought it would be more worthwhile to talk about them as they relate to different themes. Since I talked a little bit about how much I loved Aaron Hartzler’s Rapture Practice yesterday, it seemed fitting to dive in on the titles which explored religion or spirituality.

As someone who isn’t particularly religious, I won’t lie and say these were the books I was most looking forward to reading or talking about. But I think what makes these books so good and worth talking about is that they all captured my interest despite my own feelings and experiences with religion. There were four books that could really be categorized as “religious” from the Arts and Humanities list, and each one tackles something very different and those very different takes make them really worth reading, discussing, and passing along to other readers.

World Religions: The Great Faiths Explored & Explained by John Bowker

This is a DK book, which if you’re not familiar with, is a publisher that puts together these huge tomes on different topics and explores them in great detail. They tend to be very visually-driven, to the point where I can find them troubling to read because there is so much to wade through.

But it’s that abundance of information which makes Bowker’s exploration of world religions here great. This isn’t a cover-to-cover read. It’s a reference text, and it’s a bigger book, which makes the browsing factor of this more obvious.

This is an incredibly comprehensive overview of religions that are familiar and those which may be less familiar to readers. There are Western religions and Eastern religions, and what makes this book such a great tool is that it’s presented in the most objective manner possible. Bowker doesn’t have an agenda; instead, he’s offering the who, what, where, when, and why of each of the religious practices, and the book itself then highlights the visual artifacts, symbols, and more that give readers even deeper insight into the various practices.

Rapture Practice by Aaron Hartzler

Harzler’s memoir was, hands-down, one of my favorite reads in 2013. In fact, as soon as I finished reading it, I was tempted to write a length post about how much I loved it. But instead, I nominated it for committee consideration.

This is a story about Hartzler growing up in a very Evangelical household as he tries to come to terms with his own religious beliefs, as well as his own sexuality. But the second part of that is not out-and-out the focus of the book. This isn’t Hartzler’s coming out story, and I think knowing that is vital. This is instead his memoir about learning who he is when he’s living in an environment that doesn’t always encourage that sort of exploration. He knows early on he doesn’t have the same affinity toward religious practice and devotion that his parents do, but it’s not something he can be as open and honest about as he would like to be.

But what takes this story from being good to great is that Hartzler is incredibly respectful of everyone in the story. While he thinks a lot of what his parents believe — that the Rapture could happen any minute and they thus need to be prepared — he is conscious of why it is they believe that and he’s okay with it. And a lot of why he is that way is because he hopes that kind of respect can be extended toward him.

Rapture Practice isn’t a condemnation of belief or Evangelical practice. It’s a story about coming to terms with what it is you believe when you don’t necessarily believe in what you’ve grown up with. There is humor as much as heart in this one, and it has great teen appeal. This is a rare memoir written for and about being a teenager.

The Butterfly Mosque by G. Willow Wilson

Wilson’s memoir was published for adults, but it has great teen appeal. Perhaps maybe more than having appeal for teens, this is the kind of book that college students and those who are just out of college will find tremendously interesting because it explores those post-college years in a way that a lot of other books simply don’t.

When Wilson took a course in Islamic Studies in college, she thought she found her path. She wasn’t Islamic, but it was a culture that fascinated her, and when she finished college, she decided to move to Egypt and find work. It was meant to be a way to shock herself with a new and different culture, but what it ended up doing was convincing her that converting to Islam was the right path for her.

The book follows as she rectifies the knowledge, experience, assumptions, and privileges she’s had her whole life as a westerner as she enters into the middle eastern world. She’s very insightful and perceptive, but this never comes off as preachy and it never once comes off as a story about how one culture or experience is better or more right than another. A lot of that comes through when Wilson falls in love with an Egyptian who grew up Islamic — she has to face the prejudices that his family may have and does have about his wanting to marry someone who converted. Could there be bridges built between their very different worlds?

The Butterfly Mosque also offers some interesting views of what it’s like to be a woman in a country where being a woman doesn’t allow as many rights as it does in the western world, as well as what it’s like to be an Islamic woman in this new world. It’s about being a foreigner but wanting to be involved in a new culture without exploiting or using that culture as a means of understanding herself. There are so many wonderful little lines in this book about life and about experiences, but I think the thing that stood out to me the most was that Wilson never comes off as privileged nor does she preach at readers suggesting that the only way to ever live is to have these foreign experiences. Instead, much of her point is that self-reflection is key to finding peace with yourself and beliefs and that self-reflection is precisely what makes you smart, strong, and gives you confidence to face new and challenging things, whatever those things in front of you may be.

There is definitely romance here, and I think for many teen readers, that will be a really great hook to the bigger story. I love, too, that OBCB has both Wilson’s memoir, as well as her more well-known novel Alif the Unseen, because it really showcases who she is and what it is she’s doing with her career. And she’s really young, too, which should inspire readers in its own right.

The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner’s Semester at America’s Holiest University by Kevin Roose

I read this book back in 2009, and I actually reviewed it here at STACKED back then, too, so I won’t rehash my thoughts on it. One of my hesitations about the book back then was that I had some questions about the authenticity of Roose’s experience, as his mentor was A. J. Jacobs and it reminded me a lot of those “do one weird thing for a year for a book deal” situations.

But I didn’t let that color my beliefs on the value of having this book on the list because I think that Roose talks about and learns, as well as the respect he comes to develop for students at Liberty University, were important and interesting enough to merit a place. Roose’s story replaced Jacobs’s A Year of Living Biblically, which was on the 2009 iteration of OBCB, and I think that the replacement was a good one. Not because Jacobs’s story is no longer relevant — it definitely it is — but because it offers another story, another voice, and another angle on religion and religious practice.

What I find to be interesting in looking at the books on the list in this way, rather than in their big, overarching category of “Arts and Humanities,” is that I can see what the biggest theme is uniting all four of these books, and it’s a simple one: respect. Each of these books explores religion, both eastern and western practices, in very respectful ways. They’re never exploited, and they’re never meant to be studies. The three memoirs specifically are experiential, with great reflection offered by the authors. And I think that those sorts of stories are not only relatable to teen (and adult!) readers, but they give a look into a world through a set of eyes that may or may not go in with an agenda but that come out more educated, more respectful, and perhaps more humble.

MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend by Rachel Bertsche

February 13, 2012 |

My husband and I will celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary in June. We’re both in our mid-twenties. Before we got married, we talked about everything you’d expect a couple who is about to get married to talk about: what we want in a career, where we want to live, do we want kids, what sort of life do we want for ourselves in one year, five years, thirty years. But maybe the most important thing we decided as a couple before we married was that no matter what, we would not become one another’s only friends. It was crucial we’d maintain our own private friendships separate and different from our relationship.

And despite the fact the things we talked about before — the plans we envisioned — have gone completely astray on nearly every level, the last part about maintaining separate and meaningful friendships outside ourselves is something we have done. To varying levels. I like to think that decision has made weathering the things that weren’t in the plan a lot easier to grapple with.

Because of the bumps in the road, because of the changes in place and space, I think he’s had a much easier time of this than I have. My friends? I made them in college (in Iowa) and I made them in graduate school (in Texas). I live near neither. My best friend lives half a country away, and we haven’t seen each other in years. Sure I’ve got friends near me — one who lives literally a hop down the road (um, or will until Friday when she moves a car ride away) — but getting together requires planning and work. Our lives our busy and getting together requires an hour or more in the car. It’s hard to call them up and say you’ve had a day and need them there to finish up a bottle of wine right now to make it better. My husband, on the other hand, went to school here, and he has a wealth of friends who live close. It’s easy for him to drop by their place after work, for him to go out with them after work. He’s met his tribe here, so to speak, while I haven’t.

Rachel Bertsche’s memoir, MWF Seeking BFF, caught my eye when I read about it last year because I felt like I would be able to relate to Bertsche. She’s in her late-20s, newly married, and she left everything she had behind her in New York City when she moved with her husband to Chicago. She lost her support system in the move, and now she was on her own to make a new BFF in her new city so she’d have someone to turn to when she needed it. Bertsche chose to do this through serial “girl dating” — meeting up with people she’d been connected with through people she knew or through various friend-dating services or through putting herself into activities she liked and chumming up someone she felt could be a good match for her. The book is a chronicle of her dates, as well as a musing upon the ideas of friendship and how friendship changes as you get older. It’s not like you can knock on your neighbor’s door and ask them to come out to play anymore when you’ve got a career and a family.

I brought my preconceived notions to the book: Bertsche starts by telling readers what her idea of a BFF is. It’s someone you can go to at any time and it’s someone you can call up at a moment’s notice to grab dinner with. It’s someone who sees you through the good and the bad. Someone who (her words) she can grab a mani/pedi with at the last second to gossip. She talks about her two best friends in New York City and how she’s looking for that sort of companionship in her new city. This is what she wants out of her serial girl dating. Immediately, I just … didn’t connect with Bertsche the way I hoped I would. Her ideas of friendship were so wildly different than mine. It was so singular, so narrow. I knew from the start she’d never be the kind of person I’d get along with and couldn’t see myself befriending.

As she goes on her dates, though, she offers up some interesting research and insight into friendship and what it really is. Bertsche meets a wide variety of women, ranging from her own age to much older and even much younger, and she gets to know women who are in various stages of life (some who are single and still looking for romance, some who are happily married with children, some who will never quite grow up, etc). After each interaction, Bertsche talks about what did and didn’t work and why she did or didn’t see the girl as someone who had that BFF potential. At the beginning of the book, it’s almost a check list to her. Would x-named girl be the kind of girl she could call up on Sunday morning and have brunch with in an hour? No? Well, time to drop her. Would this girl be the kind of girl she could spend an afternoon discussing Harry Potter with on end and then spend the evening devouring the latest television drama? No? Well, she won’t work either.

I found myself so irritated with her definitions and her boxes and I kept wondering how I’d make it through the book. It’s a longer read, since Bertsche does chronicle (to some level) all 52 of her dates. See, I’m a big believe in the fact friends all serve different purposes. At least, that’s how I view friendship. I have friends I turn to for different things and friends who offer me differing levels of support on different things, and I like to think I offer that back. I’d be hard-pressed to believe any of my friends has a whole picture of me or knows everything about me, and it’s a fact I’m okay with. Maybe one I’m comfortable with. And that’s not to say I don’t value friendship because I certainly do, but I prefer a wide network of friends who are one-or-a-few things to me and a much tighter network of intimate friends who know a lot more and will always know a lot more. I keep it this way because it helps me evaluate what I can offer them in return. I can’t be a good friend to everyone, and I never can pretend to be. But I can be a good friend to a few people, and I can be friendly and thoughtful and kind to many, many more. If I evaluated everyone in terms of their BFF potential, I’d never actually get to offer or experience friendship. Maybe it makes me sort of a hippie in thinking there is a bit of the organic in how it happens and how it develops and how those circles I maintain can always shift. I believe give and take happens when and where it should and when you’re in sync with someone else, you just know.

About half way through MWF Seeking BFF, Bertsche has a total light bulb moment. She, too, realizes that trying out everyone as a potential BFF — her idea of what a BFF is anyway — wasn’t going to help her really make friends. In fact, she says that her idea of a BFF was in and of itself out of sync with her life now. Nothing could ever be what it was like when she was younger and unmarried and in New York City. That realization was a huge one for her, and it shaped how she approached the remaining friend dates she made. It also made me step back and think about my own preconceived notions of Bertsche, too: I’d judged her immediately, hadn’t I? I considered my friendship compatibility with her, too. Who she offered herself at the beginning of the book rubbed me wrong but who she offered herself at the end of the book was someone I admired a bit.

Her biggest realization in the entire experiment? Friendship comes about when you learn to be independent. That’s really what her book is about — independence and figuring out how to be.

What stood out to me most in the book and what made it a worthwhile read, especially in the beginning where I did a lot more sighing than engaging, were the lengthy musings on what friendship is and what it really means. Bertsche made me do a lot of thinking about what friendship is and not just what it is to have a friend, but what it means to be a friend. The truth of it, and I think what makes it a hard topic to think about or talk about, is that sometimes you can never know what makes you a friend to someone else. What you believe you offer isn’t always what the other person is receiving. They may be getting something entirely different. Bertsche also broaches the idea of need fulfillment and about social networks and how or why some friendships endure while others never quite hit it off. She backs it with research and her own experiences, and because I’d been along with her on her dates, I felt like I got a good understanding of the hows and whys of her assertions. She mentioned more than once feeling a bit weird when she’d find common ground with someone over a sick or dead dad (hers had died when she was in her early 20s). But she offered it, and her returns either came back ten fold or never came back at all. As much as it was awkward to put herself out there like that, her reflections upon it were great, and I quite admired her at all for putting herself out there like that. Personally, the tough topics don’t make it out of my mouth until I truly know and trust someone wholly. Risk and reward are tricky.

More than once, I put the book aside and thought through my own feelings about friendship and what matters to me, and my husband and I even had a lengthy chat about what we believe our closest and most meaningful friendships are now and why they are that way. We talked about what we feel holds us back and what we do and don’t have in friendships and why we do or don’t care to have that. I couldn’t help think this would make an interesting book club title because the topics worth discussing here are many. Even if the chronicling of every friendship gets tiring — and it does — the moments of reflection at the end are worth it.

One of the points I disagreed with, though, had to do with maintenance of friendship. Bertsche (and many of those she pulls from) is a big believer in the value of the in-person interaction; she’s regularly discussing the phone call over the text message, over the email, over the Facebook or Twitter interaction. This sort of showed her privilege a bit in being an upper-middle class urbanite — something that also grated at me a bit as a reader. She had the opportunities to get out and do things, had the money and resources to go on all of these dates (she does admit to the cost of the endeavor). The truth is, sometimes our good friends, those we want to give and share with, are never going to be there in the flesh with us when we need it. And while it’s certainly one thing to have that person next door, in today’s modern world, I think it’s becoming a lot more of a luxury than a regular experience. I don’t think maintaining a good friendship means you have to be there in person. It just means you have to be there, period.

My other big criticism of MWF Seeking BFF is that Bertsche periodically dives into female stereotyping. She becomes one and she pushes it in her own observations. There are moments where she discusses food and weight and bodies in a way that made me wonder why it was there in the first place. Then it hit me: target demographic. These bits weren’t authentic to the story nor did I think they were even authentic to Bertsche nor the experience she was trying to share. It felt simply like a way to make her story relatable to a certain 20-something female audience. Take a second to think about all of the magazines aimed at the demographic. It’s not entirely shocking, but I found it incredibly frustrating and simply noise to the greater stuff in this book. Is it possible for a memoir by a woman to not go down this road? Not everyone worries about whether they ate too much sushi, whether or not they’ve gained the average 2 pounds a year, whether they look like crap when they go to the grocery store when they’re feeling less than amazing. I can overlook it, but it doesn’t make it less irritating as a reader.

The book reads like a Malcolm Gladwell title in how it approaches weaving research and anecdote and in some ways, it reminded me a bit of Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project (which I loved). I think the audience on this one is adult women, but because Bertsche’s relationship only plays into the story so long, it’ll easily appeal to those who are married or single. The premise is friendship, and she doesn’t stray too much from that. While walking away from the book didn’t necessarily change my ideas about friendship nor relationships, it did further cement them a bit. I noted a few pages with passages and ideas I believed, including this one: “It can be freeing to have relationships built on exactly who you are at the moment […] If it’s a good match, you’ll find that it wasn’t actually necessary for you to have all those shared experiences.” This is spot on.

Back to my original story: am I bummed to not have friends right here at my call in my new world outside college and grad school? Sure. But the truth is, what I get out of my friendships is worth more than the simple act of being able to walk to their house and share a drink. The real value is in something much deeper and something that transcends space and place, but you can never, ever go wrong simply being kind and thoughtful toward everyone, regardless of whether or not you are seeking a friend. You always get it back some how. I like to think every day I’m lucky for what I have when it comes to friends because they are worth more than their weight in gold. No matter what anyone says or tells you, they will always be as (and sometimes more) important than other relationships in your life.

I purchased a copy of this book.

What I’ve Been Reading and Listening to, Twitter-Style

April 28, 2011 |

Some mini-reviews, Twitter-style, of what I’ve been reading and listening to lately!

My Life, the Theater, and Other Tragedies by Allen Zadoff
In Adam’s high school, the theater department is split right down the middle: the arrogant actors on one side, the nerdy techies on the other. But when Adam, a techie with a love for lights, falls for Summer, a new actress, he is torn between his friends and his heart. A quick read that falls a bit short of Zadoff’s debut, Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can’t Have, this book is nevertheless a wonderful depiction of a teen boy: his insecurities, fears, struggles, and aspirations.

Bossypants by Tina Fey
A compilation of Tina Fey’s musings on balancing career and motherhood, being a boss, comedy, and being a woman, this book was absolutely hilarious. Fey’s true voice shone through, and her anecdotes were laugh out loud. Her comparisons of being a little bit skinny and a little bit fat were especially amusing–this woman is a great observer of society.

Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman
A charming audiobook covering the courtship and marriage of Charles Darwin and his wife, Emma, who clashed in their beliefs regarding natural selection and faith. Impeccably researched, Heiligman masterfully weaves together pertinent facts, quotations, and amusing anecdotes into a seamless narrative. Narrator Rosalyn Landor’s British accent is perfect for this production.

13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson
I finally picked this up after hearing so much hype over the upcoming release of The Last Little Blue Envelope. Following Ginny on her quest throughout Europe as she opens up her aunt’s succession of notes to her is a blast, and Maureen Johnson’s writing is engaging and amusing. The cast of supporting characters is well-fleshed out and three-dimensional, and Ginny’s emotions are true-to-life. I started listening to this on audio during my commute and had to bring the print copy home on Friday so I wouldn’t have to wait until the next week to finish it up!