STACKED

books

Getting graphic again

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As I mentioned before, I’m taking a graphic novel course. This week, I tackled my manga assignment and did a little extracurricular reading I am very excited to blog.

Deathnote by Tsugumi Ohba and illustrated by Takeshi Obata is a manga I’ve read a little about before. And boy, I wish rather than reading reviews and stories about its history of run ins with censors, I’d actually read the manga. Take that to mean I may or may not have gotten a donation of most of the run of the books to my library and I let them go. Deathnote, at least the first volume, was really quite good.

A shinigami drops a notebook — a death notebook — into the human world, where it is picked up by 17-year-old straight-A student Light Yagami. Inside the notebook, he learns that this notebook is actually a death notebook that allows him to write the names down of people he wants to die. If he does not specify a method of death within an allotted time, the person whose name is written will die by a heart attack. To ensure that anyone named, say, Sam doesn’t die, the person with the notebook must picture the intended victim to ensure accuracy.

When Light gets the notebook, he is confronted with the Shinigami who dropped it. A Shinigami is a death god (aka: the one who does the dirty business) and he informs Light that he is the only one who can see him. That is, the only person who knows who Light can off is the shinigami; however, were anyone else to touch the notebook, they would be able to see the shinigami and the gig would be over.

Being smart and thoughtful, Light decides to use the notebook for good and not evil — he will be eradicating evil-doers. And he wastes no time in doing so. But the Japanese FBI will soon be hot on his case; even the evil-doers of the world don’t deserve immediate death. It is all too suspicious when they are all dying suddenly of heart attacks.

Deathnote was a super quick paced manga that really felt like a story out of mythology. Much of manga is rooted in myth and legend, and I felt like Ohba really grasped onto that. I loved the illustrations, which moved perfectly at pace with the story line. The shinigam is delightfully horrific looking, and Light wields his power masterfully for what you’d expect of the top-performing student in the country. Although there is clearly some violence in the story line, I didn’t think it was outrageous, nor did I find the concept of being able to kill with the deathnote as offensive as others have made it sound. I know this title is really popular, and I can see why: it’s something we’ve all fantasized about — not necessarily the killing part, but the power to do whatever we wanted without consequences. What a trip. I’ve already picked up volume 2 to continue this one.

As promised, here’s your treat. This week, I was able to find the new Stephenie Meyer goody on my library’s shelves — the Twilight graphic novel. Although I haven’t read all of the series, I have read Twilight and seen the movie. I feel educated enough to judge its merits as a graphic novel.

Let me just say, Young Kim deserves all the credit on this one! Twilight translates surprisingly well to the graphic format, and it is entirely due to Kim’s abilities as an artist. The illustrations at times are photographic quality; more than once I had to really examine the art to see if it was a photo or not. Bella is well-depicted, and I think that it’s a more realistic rendering than what K. Stewart gives her in the film version. She’s imperfect and yet intriguing, and Edward is the same way. Both look their respective ages, rather than older as I think they look in the film.

I’ve read, though, some of the art may be photo-oped — as a newbie to the format, this really didn’t bother me. For die-hard graphic novels fans, this will probably be irritating. You can read a fan’s critique here, and many of the points they make are clearly the opposite of mine.

Kim uses color very carefully here, and when it is used, it is stunning. The story in graphic format moves smoothly, though I found the use of the dialog bubbles distracting at points and even a bit garbled. A bit more editing would have been useful to make those issues less noticeable. Likewise, there were a lot of fonts used throughout the graphic novel, making that a little more distracting.

For Twilight fans, this is a nice companion, though I think some graphic novel enthusiasts will find a lot to like here. The story is good, but the art is what stands out. This will be a series, and I found myself at the end of this one clamoring for the second. Maybe that makes me an underappreciater of good graphic novels, but I’m an equal-opportunity reader. Bring on New Moon.

(If you ask, yes, I liked Deathnote more, so don’t worry – I’m not even comparing them in the least!).

The Gardener by SA Bodeen

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Admittedly, I am not much of a science fiction reader. When I heard about S.A. Bodeen’s The Gardener, though, I knew I wanted to read it. I’d read The Compound and while it wasn’t my favorite book, it’s a book that my teens really enjoy. I was ready to see what Bodeen could do in her sophomore effort.

Mason, our main character, is a maverick. Of course, we won’t know this immediately. It’s something we discover when he steals a pass into his mother’s work place — a nursing home of sorts run by TroDyn, a large science corporation that has its hands in about everything in their Portland-area home town of Melby Falls — and immediately spots a group of kids about his age who look completely comatose. What could be wrong with them, Mason wonders?

Of course, it doesn’t stop at wondering and of course, it’s the incredibly beautiful and flawless girl who somehow manages to convince Mason to free her from the home and save her. With his best friend. Mason does just that.

It’s here that the story unravels into an incredibly fast-paced story of science, deception, and corporate involvement in science and humanity.

Did I mention Mason has a huge scar on the side of his face from an accident in his early child hood? Oh, and he doesn’t know who his dad is beyond a DVD he stumbled upon in his mother’s files of him reading The Runaway Bunny. Oh, yeah, and mom is hiding a lot of money from Mason, too, which he would love to use in college when he goes to study at Stanford.

I realize I’ve left a lot of plot out of this, but the short and long of it is that saying any more will ruin the suspense and the action that develops. The story is well-developed in plot, with enough twists and turns that kept me flipping frantically through the pages. TroDyn is an evil empire set on solving one of the world’s greatest problems — food! — by doing something entirely unethical to future generations. Lalia, who is the girl Mason saves, will lead him into unleashing their secrets to the world. And it might just be his dad who has something to do with it. The Runaway Bunny also plays well into the evil-doing.

The Gardener will appeal to many readers, though hard-core science fiction fans will see many of the holes in the story. This will likely appeal to more reluctant readers, since it moves so quickly. We have a handful of well-developed characters who are interesting and encourage further reading.

My biggest problem with the book, though, is that we don’t have well-developed character relationships. Solomon and Eve, who we meet near the end of the story, were introduced as partners, but there is a quick turnaround in that relationship that never once made sense to me. She went from his assistant to suddenly evil, and since I hadn’t been introduced to either until the end of the story, that shift was never believable or easy enough to accept for me. I think since those two characters do play such a vital role in the end of the book that they could have been better sketched. I thought they were really interesting and was sad I didn’t get more.

The ending of the book, which we work toward at such a rapid pace, is actually a bit of a let down. I felt there was an opportunity to go out with a real bang, but instead, it’s kind of flat and undynamic. Mason the superhero never emerges where it could have been opportune.

A few plot holes are obvious, but because the story itself is interesting and unique, they are mostly forgivable. I thought they were quite similar to the holes I found in The Compound, which made me wonder if that’s Bodeen’s style. Most readers will suspend their belief in the story anyway, so forgiving the holes will be pretty natural.

Fans of The Compound will devour this title. I know my teens will really enjoy this one, and this is a title that begs to be book talked. And boy, if some of the ideas in here don’t terrify you, then you don’t watch the news quite enough.

*Review copy from publisher.

AudioSynced: War Dances by Sherman Alexie

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I love Sherman Alexie. I read many of his short stories and poems in college, and I’ve read both Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian and Ten Little Indians. When I saw my local library had his latest collection of poetry and short stories available as an audio book, I knew I needed to pick it up. Aside from the fact I like his writing, I knew, too, he reads his own work. I knew Alexie had a very distinct voice, and I knew that would make this audio book really stand out.

And it did.

While leery at first of trying to listen to an audio book of short stories — my thought was that the story breaks would be difficult to follow — War Dances changed my mind. And quite frankly, listening to poetry aloud is the way it’s meant to be enjoyed for many, and Alexie writes his in the way that’s meant to be performed.

War Dances, like Alexie’s other books, made me both want to laugh and to cry throughout. The mixture of poetry and prose moves seamlessly, and what really works well in the audio is that Alexie just reads with his own personal reading voice. He doesn’t give any of his characters separate voices, though he does change his intonation slightly to distinguish dialog from description.

A couple of pieces stood out to me distinctly. A short story, actually one of the lengthier ones in the collection, follows the loss of hearing of the main character. In this story, he describes the process of losing his hearing by reflecting on his own father’s life and end-of-life illness. The sound of hearing loss was like that of a colony of cockroaches taking up residence inside him. What I loved about this story was its homage to Kafka and how Alexie turned a well-known tale into something entirely new and refreshing. The allusion’s slight, aside from the introductory quotation, but it is a story enjoyed on so many levels.

Like many of the GoodReads reviews mentioned, the poem “Ode to a Mixtape” was wonderful. That, along with the poem about giving up one’s seat on an airplane were picturesque and such amusing insight into our culture today. All of the poems in War Dances can and would be enjoyed by those who aren’t normally “poetry people” since they are easy to grasp and quite memorable because of the emotion they provoke in the listener.

What this audio book does, though, is give you raw Sherman Alexie. He has an incredibly different and perfect reading voice. Alexie has a tiny bit of a lisp and a bit of an accent. Lucky for you, WHYY Broadcast has an interview with Alexie on their website that gives us a reading of the first poem in War Dances. Listen to the incredible lilt of his voice. Four hours of his story telling could have been forty hours for me, and I would have still listened in. There is something really engaging in his imperfect voice that made me care about what he was saying and want to listen to more. Oh, and please ignore the commentator on this one – it seems clear to me she didn’t read the book before interviewing him.

Don’t believe this will be an easy collection to read or understand. There are some very difficult to grasp scenes, and the language at times is not necessarily what you like listening to. But those moments are what makes Alexie’s points — this is a book of stories about ourselves, the disgusting and the beautiful, the racist and the too-politically-correct, and moreover, the story of art and writing. The man is brilliant and certainly a modern master of writing.

I was sad to finish War Dances. It was short, but it was enough to whet my need to seek out some of Alexie’s backlist on audio — but only if it is read by him.

Field Notes: Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins

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What would you get if you combined Twilight’s paranormal elements with Harry Potter’s school of magic?

Something close to Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins.

This book — part one of a trilogy — follows Sophie as she is sent to Hectate Hall to confront her witchy side. Quite literally, that is. She’s a witch who has used her powers wrong one too many times, and now her mom has sent her to get herself together.

But what Sophie discovers is that her family may be a lot darker than she first believed. And, quite frankly, she may not be a witch at all.

Hex Hall is not the most original book or premise, but what stands out is a rollicking hilarious main character. I found Sophie a breath of fresh air. She’s sarcastic and drops a good allusion that is worthy of many chuckle.

Hawkins’s book will appeal to paranormal or magic fans, but I think the real appeal will be to people who wonder what the big deal is with those genres. This will make you laugh and will leave you with just enough mystery to keep the story line moving. A couple of deaths — or near death incidents — and a suspect in the only enrolled vampire, who happens to be Sophie’s roommate, propel the plot forward.

The ending gives enough of a twist to make readers seek out the second book. It’s worth the read but it won’t be the next great work, nor will it develop a cult following a la the books from which it lifts elements. Sophisiticated readers will be annoyed, though Sophie will redeem the book for them.

Dirty Little Secrets by C. J. Omololu

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Janssen hit something on the head last week in stating that there has been a lot of hype over a number of young adult titles lately that just don’t live up to it. There have been some big budgets on a number of titles — especially debuts — that have left me wondering what the point was. However, one book has slid under the radar for a few months now, and it’s thanks to a colleague across town from me that I picked it up and immediately decided I needed to order it for my library collection.

Dirty Little Secrets by C. J. Omololu, weighing in at just about 200 pages, packs an unbelievable amount in a short book. It is worth every minute of your time.

Lucy keeps secrets. Her best friend doesn’t know them. Her soon-to-be boyfriend doesn’t know them, nor will he. The secrets remain between her and her mother, as well as her distance brother and even more distant sister.

The secrets are the items her mother hoards in their home.

Lucy’s mom keeps everything, from old, rotting food, to Christmas gifts meant to be given years ago. Her mother seems normal from the outside, working in a medical facility, but she is far from okay both inside her house and inside her own head.

Unfortunately, we never get to know Lucy’s mother. She dies immediately in the book. But Lucy ISN’T sad about it. In fact, she’s terrified that the secrets will get out, and she cannot imagine a fate worse than making the news for living in a house of squalor.

Dirty Little Secrets takes place over the course of just over one day. Lucy is a character who you will be unable to forget, as she drags the reader through emotional torment. At once, I feel sorry for her mother and hate her mother, but throughout the book, I was far more concerned about Lucy. I wanted her to be safe and get out, and I wanted her to overcome the troubles she had been keeping without ruining a sweet budding relationship with a boy. She’d never had one before, of course, thanks to keeping the secrets.

We are dragged through this house and the accumulation of things in this book, and in such a manner, we are completely invested in Lucy’s safety. Although it would be easy to label her heartless about the death of her mother, we also see how this is a moment of liberation for Lucy. She covers her mother in a sheet and sets to getting things clean enough at home to make rescue less about the mess and more about the loss of life.

But it is her meddling sister that won’t let this happen as she wants.

I can’t write more about this book because the ending is completely unexpected and utterly fitting. Dirty Little Secrets left me near tears throughout the entire story, though the very end almost made me smile. I felt Lucy’s decision.

Omololu’s story never once feels rushed or overwritten. It was extremely well executed, and the pacing was spot on. When I was 10 pages from the end, I worried there was going to be a sequel to end the story; fortunately, a strong writer pulled off a surprise twist that makes this a stand alone knock-out of a book. It is completely realistic and explores a hidden world that we do indeed only hear about in the news. Although Omololu states she doesn’t write from experience, her work is informed through her work with a hoarder’s organization.

This book was so compelling and so important that I nominated it for ALA’s BFYA consideration. It is my hope that it gets much-deserved attention that way.