STACKED

books

A Couple of Disappointing Sequels

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Is there anything more disappointing in the reading world than a sequel that fails to live up to its predecessor? Alas, it happens all too often. I’ve discussed a couple of recent disappointing sequels below. (I read both of these over a long weekend, making for a pretty unsatisfying few days reading-wise!)

Feedback by Robison Wells

Unfortunately, Wells showed all his cards in the first installment, saving none for the second. While Variant was an edge of your seat thrill ride with a killer twist, Feedback is slow and plodding, with no new revelations or surprises. Nothing happens, really. There are a lot of conversations, and I suppose there’s some action, but it feels strained and a bit pointless. Characters backtrack, little progress is made, and I have a hard time recollecting where things stand at the end of the book. It makes for a pretty unmemorable read. It’s unfortunate, too, since I so enjoyed Variant. While the sequel is a must-read for rabid fans of the first book, I’d say that overall this is a series that can be safely skipped.



Seconds Away by Harlan Coben

Coben does a better job following up his series opener than Wells does, but I still found it a bit of a disappointment. He gives us a new self-contained mystery while advancing the overall series arc, which is nice and something that mysteries do very well. I didn’t have as much patience this time around for the somewhat cliched characters, though. Some of their high school speech rang a little false to me, like someone doing an exaggerated imitation of teenagers. But what really made this a less than satisfying read were the coincidences, which are legion and make the story hard to take seriously. So much of the story also hinges on characters not revealing information that really can be safely revealed, a  lazy plot device.

Still, the mystery is interesting, in particular the long arc, and we get more insight into Ema’s character, which I appreciated. Rather than letting that particular plot thread hang for many, many books, he gives us fulfillment in book two. It’s refreshing because it’s so unusual. I’ll most likely be picking up the next books in this series, though I hope Coben strengthens the issues I focused on here.
Both books borrowed from my local library.

Audio Review: The Freedom Maze by Delia Sherman

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I was quite surprised by how much I enjoyed The Freedom Maze. While I like historical fiction, I’m very picky about the time periods I choose, and neither of the time periods featured in The Freedom Maze (1860s and 1960s American South) are ones I normally seek out. But audiobook selection is limited and this one won the Nebula (Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Book), so I gave it a shot.

It’s very good. It’s a book in conversation with Edward Eager’s The Time Garden, which I have never read, so I won’t be able to comment on that aspect. But if you have read the book and my plot synopsis sounds very familiar, that’s why.

It’s 1960 and thirteen-year-old Sophie has been forced to spend the summer with her aunt and grandmother at the old family estate in Louisiana. It used to be a large plantation, home to a wealthy family and many slaves in the 1800s. It’s much reduced in the 20th century, but the old ideas still linger in the mind of Sophie’s grandmother and mother.

Sophie resents being there so much that she wishes she were somewhere else – a place where she has a family and friends who care about her, something she feels is missing in her current situation. This wish is overheard by a magical trickster being, who sends Sophie 100 years back on time to 1860, but leaves her right where she is physically.

No one recognizes Sophie when she shows up at the plantation 100 years in the past, and due to her tan and her frizzy hair, Sophie is mistaken for a slave. She’s assumed to be the pale daughter of the family’s white brother from New Orleans and his female slave, but a slave nonetheless. From there, the story takes Sophie to the big house as a house slave, then to the fields and the sugar house of the sugar plantation. Along the way, Sophie comes to care for the slaves she works with and comes to a greater understanding of the history behind the racial tensions she’s experienced in the 1960s.

More than that, though, her wish is fulfilled: she has friends and a family who risk their lives for her. And Sophie, in her turn, risks her life for theirs. She also does a good bit of growing up. This is historical fiction but also very much a coming of age story. In that way, it feels a bit retro. I think it’s definitely one my mother would have picked out for us to listen to on a long car trip.

The idea of combining two historical time periods is an interesting one. I’ve only ever seen it done elsewhere in Emily Whitman’s Wildwing, where it was fun but not as entertaining or consuming of a story. There’s actually quite a bit of time spent in the 1960s, more so than I initially thought, but I was fascinated by it. Sophie’s mother is a racist, a mindset inherited from her own mother, who is a near-clone of “Old Missy,” the matriarch of the plantation family in the 19th century. But other views her mother holds are more progressive: she’s divorced her husband and buckles at the idea that to be a proper Southern belle, she must be a homemaker and eschew employment. Due to the divorce, she needed to find a job, and she did so – and then discovered she really enjoyed the work. I appreciated the interplay of the two time periods. The 1960s are there for a reason, not just as a stand-in for the present.
A brief author interview at the end of the book describes how much research Sherman put in to her story (it took her many years to write it), and it shows. Setting and historical details are excellently drawn. I also feel that Sherman does a good job of making this Sophie’s story, as the protagonist, but also avoiding turning Sophie into a white savior of black people, which could have been very easy to do in this sort of setup.
This is an easy choice for historical fiction fans, especially since it covers two historical time periods. And for anyone who’s ever wondered what it would be like to live as a slave in the American South, this is a natural choice too – Sherman has done her homework. While it’s definitely a fantasy, what with the magical being and the time travel, that’s not the focus. Those aspects are simply the tools Sherman uses. 
And of course, I couldn’t recommend this without endorsing the narration, which is excellent. The narrator has a perfectly authentic Southern drawl and gives the white and the black characters accents without exaggeration. It’s a good thing this one earned the Nebula, because otherwise I doubt I would ever have bothered to read it; goodness knows that cover is not helping it any. But I’m glad it brought the book out of relative anonymity and is giving it a wider audience, something it certainly deserves.

Audiobook provided by the publisher.

Then You Were Gone by Lauren Strasnick

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Grief and intimacy don’t seem like they’re entirely related things, but they are. The lines between them aren’t too far apart, and the way they can entangle fascinates me as a reader. In Lauren Strasnick’s Then You Were Gone, these lines are explored and exploited in a way that make readers question where and if they can be extracted from one another.

Adrienne and Dakota were best friends for a long time. But two years ago, they just stopped being friends. Adrienne was never quite sure why.

Flash forward to now. A voicemail on Adrienne’s phone from Dakota. It begs her to call back. But Adrienne waits. She doesn’t call back.

Then it’s too late.

Dakota goes missing, and she’s presumed dead. But she’s not just presumed dead. Everyone thinks she’s killed herself. See, Dakota’s life over the last couple of years has been about performance. She was in a band getting some recognition. She’d earned a reputation. A name for herself. But it wasn’t because she was great but because she was a little bit reckless. A little bit wild. So her going missing isn’t entirely a surprise, and it’s easy to see why someone who had built up so much would want to kill themselves. Especially because she never seemed happy.

But Adrienne isn’t going to settle that easily. Why was it Dakota reached out to her? There had to be a reason, and Adrienne needs to know.

In between this, though, is Adrienne’s relationship with boyfriend Lee. It’s steamy. It’s sensual. It’s sexy. Lee is good for Adrienne, and he treats her well. He cares for her, but he doesn’t do so in a way that makes her a weak girl or a fawn to him. Instead, she gains as much from the relationship as he does. But the further Adrienne obsesses about Dakota’s disappearance, the further away from Lee she pulls. The further away from herself she pulls.

Adrienne wants to get to know Julian better. He’s in her lit class — her favorite class, the one she does best in, the one taught by Nick Murphy who really thinks Adrienne is something special. Julian was the last guy to be with Dakota and, she thinks, the last one to see her alive. As Adrienne finds the courage to talk to him, it becomes much more than talk. It becomes something heavier. Together, the two of them are grieving the loss. More than that, though, together, the two of them are finding intimacy. It’s not with one another though. It’s with their shared memory of Dakota.

See, Adrienne has started to dress like Dakota. Has started to take on the persona of Dakota. She’s living in the image she saw and believed to be Dakota of now. And Julian wants to still be with Dakota. So now that Adrienne is playing the part, so will he. He wants to be with Adrienne not because he likes Adrienne but he likes to imagine she is Dakota. Adrienne is game. Adrienne is leading. But the moment when the two of them are naked — that moment right before they’re about to have sex — Adrienne wakes up and has the horrible realization of what’s going on. Neither she nor Julian are in this for themselves. For who each other is. Rather, they’re playing the role of Dakota. Adrienne living as her, Julian buying into the image.

It’s this moment when Adrienne realizes she needs to find Dakota and figure out why it is she left. Because Adrienne doesn’t believe for a moment that she’s dead.

Then You Were Gone doesn’t offer readers everything. It’s short, fast-paced, and it’s written in a very minimalistic style. It’s because that’s how Adrienne thinks and processes. She wants the immediate answer. She wants the solution. She wants to push through to get there. But as much as the plot moves quickly, Strasnick is smart in her use of sensual, romantic moments between Lee and Adrienne to slow the pacing down a bit. To give us real insight into who they are. We learn that Lee really and truly is a good guy. Adrienne, at her core, is a good girl. But it’s that grief, that missing, that longing for her former best friend, that drives her to become someone who she isn’t. Even though we know Adrienne is an average student, we know she loves her lit class. She loves the teacher and the content. The grief, though, hits her so hard that she begins to not care. She begins to fail in that class too, and interestingly, it is her only class with Julian. A sign, maybe?

Spoilers abound in the next two paragraphs, so proceed accordingly.

It turns out that Dakota’s not dead at all. She’s gone away. She’s become fed up with people seeing her and believing her to be a certain kind of person. What Adrienne’s done in her grieving of Dakota is flash back to their friendship. To those moments right before things fell apart. Dakota pushed Adrienne to talk about love and to admit to admiring her wholeheartedly. To kissing her, to feeling her physically even though Adrienne wasn’t necessarily comfortable with it (she was mentally, but the actual, physical doing of it wasn’t okay with her). These scenes highlight what was wrong with Dakota and what made her want to leave: she was too easily able to manipulate people, and through that manipulation — through that playing and toying with other people — she lost the sense of who she was to herself. She realized she was nothing but an idea and image to others because that was all she’d become to herself. She had no true intimacy with anyone. It was all a game.

The truth of the mystery is that it was teacher Nick Murphy who finally drove Dakota away. She’d become pregnant from him. She couldn’t face him, couldn’t face herself, and certainly, she couldn’t raise a baby. While this was a twist in the plot — we’d been led to believe what a great guy Nick was — I didn’t necessarily buy it. I didn’t get to know him well enough, and I didn’t know what his relationship with Dakota was at all, since all of what we learn comes from Adrienne’s perspective. Adrienne and Dakota hadn’t been friends for two years, so there is a huge gap in knowledge and history. I wish this hadn’t been the outcome because there were a number of alternatives. That said, I suspect some readers could argue that Dakota made this story up (she is dodgy when she and Adrienne reunite), but since Adrienne presses her teacher about it, he relents (which, could be argued is because he’s a teacher and fearful of losing his position were any sort of accusations to emerge).

Strasnick’s prose is tight, and her story compelling. It’s, at times, sexy but the grief undercuts it in a way to make these moments more than passing moments of physical interaction. They’re intimate. They’re whole and naked moments of people being honest and true with one another. As I noted earlier, this is when we really learn who Adrienne and Lee are as individuals. And because Dakota couldn’t feel those moments in her life, that’s why she felt a fake. That’s why when Adrienne and Julian have their encounter, it falls apart. Adrienne is more than simply a shadow of Dakota. Grief is, of course, an intimate experience because it is utterly unique to every individual who experiences it. Having grief work in tandem with intimacy only amplified both experiences for the characters.

One of the smaller details I loved about the book was that Adrienne didn’t have a traditional family structure, nor was this non-traditional structure ever a problem. She lived with her mom and her mom’s boyfriend Sam — not step-father, as she points out once in the story. Sam loves Adrienne as his own, and they actually spend time together doing things. In fact, it’s Sam who reveals a small detail about Dakota that helps Adrienne solve the mystery at the end. He’s a cool character and it’s refreshing to read stories like this, where the parental structure isn’t either a happily married couple or a half a unit due to one member’s death. This is the reality of a lot of today’s teens.

There is a sweet ending to the story. It ties up the loose ends of romance and intimacy and grief in an unexpected but, I think, well-deserved way. This reminded me quite a bit of Kirsten Hubbard’s Like Mandarin, with Dakota playing the role of Mandarin quite well and Adrienne playing the role of Grace. It also combined many of the elements of a number of contemporary grief novels, too, and drawing these two things together just worked. Pass this off to readers looking for a book about friendship and grief, with a mystery and romance skimming the surface.

Then You Were Gone published on January 1 and is available now. Review copy received from the publisher. 

Thank You For Being a Friend*

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Two years ago (exactly two years ago, in fact), a handful of blogging librarians I’ve always respected and admired and myself finally met all together in the same place. We’d been talking on and off for a while. It was at ALA Midwinter in San Diego, though, we finally could put faces to words. Aside from what we got out of that experience, what we really walked away with was a motto. All six of us women decided that, no matter what, we’d have one another’s backs through this career. That we’d help out where we could and offer encouragement where necessary. We even created our own listserv for this, giving ourselves a nickname.

In those two years, there have been job changes. Shifts in responsibility. There’s been experimentation. Publication. Leadership within professional organizations. Committee appointments. Devastating disappointments in any number of aspects of our lives — personal and professional. Through it all though, that support has been there.

There are times that we’ve disagreed and vehemently. There are times we’ve collaborated across the miles to make awesome programs happen at our individual libraries. It’s a safe space for what we need it to be. It’s a place that, no matter what’s going on anywhere else, we know we can share our hearts and our thoughts without judgment (because disagreement and playing devil’s advocate on issues is not, in fact, judgment).

This weekend, one of the ladies sent an email just stating she couldn’t do it anymore. That she was overwhelmed, stressed, sick over what she had to accomplish in a small amount of time but didn’t think she could.

We rallied. We joined her in what she needed to do. We sent support. We told her how much what she’s doing matters (it does, even if SHE isn’t getting the recognition for it). Because we all know that she absolutely, positively can do it.

I was thinking about this in light of an incredible post from one of my all-time library heroes, Hi Miss Julie. If you haven’t read it, go do so. Julie, like so many of us, works in the trenches. She’s on the ground level providing incredible services for her patrons. As such, she hardly ever gets recognition for doing her job because, well, she’s doing her job. But — and this is the huge take away here — everyone doing jobs like hers still deserves respect and admiration for what they’re doing. Sure, it’s not sexy to be a reader’s advisor. It’s not sexy to get sweaty doing a story time. It’s not sexy to think that the ebook discussion and the entire fixation on making technology the means and ends of library service is boring or uninteresting or not even IMPORTANT. Wrapped in this is the gender discussion and her means of bringing that up is so important. I particularly commend Julie’s ability to point out that it is so often men in our field who get rock star status. That few men are the ones on the floor “doing the dirty work.”

I can’t help but remember what it felt like when I brought up the issue of ARCs at ALA and being so belittled by a “big name” male librarian in our field for my insistence this was an important issue. I am a woman and wow, what an unimportant issue. Was I ever put in my place on that.

Julie’s post highlights some of the women who inspire her on a daily basis for what they’re doing. On a daily basis. The programs they’re running. The thoughts they’re having about ground-level librarianship. About sharing books with readers. It made me take a step back and think about this amazing community of support that exists in her world, and it made me think about the amazing community of support I have for myself, too. It made me think about how important and invaluable that system of support is. Because if it were not for the incredible female support systems I have in my life, I would not have been able to get to where I am right now. I mean that personally AND professionally.

It made me think about how much I hate when a woman I support and admire and want to succeed doesn’t get what she deserves. Or worse, it made me think about how much I hate when she’s disrespected or looked down upon for what she thinks or how she speaks. We talk about how great and supportive the book community is — that includes librarians, it includes book bloggers, it includes teachers and so many more — and it is. There are amazing individuals, amazing women, doing their things in this community. But how often are we standing up and cheering them on actively?

I think a lot of our support systems are private things. They’re that way for many reasons — I’d never publicly lay out who it is I turn to when I need x, y, or z. Yet it tears me apart to see those women who I support and cheer on and want to do so well fail to do so over and over again. Because what it is they’re doing isn’t “sexy” enough (and Julie makes an incredible point on this word, too, asking why it is THAT word means that something is innovative and I can’t help wonder the gendered implications therein). Or because, you know, they’re women and in a field where women “dominate,” it should be men getting recognition.

I just want you to spend a couple minutes thinking about the books on the New York Times YA Bestsellers list, too. Who and what is there. Who and what is getting time and attention and in the end, money and support.

I’ve been thinking about this in relation to blogging culture, too. A lot of us do it because we love doing it. We love the record keeping for ourselves and we benefit by finding a community and then sharing things that resonate with us. But what happens when that is a one-way street? When, for example, a blog only exists for itself and yet benefits from the traffic other blogs deliver to it and the original blog never offers their traffic/readership back? In other words, they get all the recognition and don’t take the time to offer back goods to those giving them the help.

I ask because I know how important it is for ME to link back to things I read. It’s not about being egotistical here. It’s about wanting a little recognition for doing something everyday that so few people are willing to commit to doing in the same way. So, it hurts when, say, an organization whose blog benefits from your audience doesn’t refer traffic back to other blogs from which it may be inspired.

This week, another friend noted that she’d done a favor for someone and never got a thank you for doing it. That favor was something she didn’t need to do, but the person who got it inevitably benefits from it and will benefit from it significantly. Though it seems like a tiny thing — a thank you — it is actually quite a large thing, especially knowing the implications of it.

It’s a moment of being unrecognized for work.

Where I’m going with this post is here: why aren’t we better supporting and recognizing the work we’re doing on a daily basis? Why is it we don’t stop and simply thank and offer a hand or a heart to those who are hitting the ground every single day doing their work in the best way they possibly can?

I’m not of the belief we need to reward every action and interaction — I don’t believe in a token culture. But what I do believe in is stepping back and recognizing those individuals who do things for you and for whom you offer what you can in return. More than that, though, we should take the time and effort to thank people for their time, for their efforts, for what it is they bring to the table each and every day, even if it’s not the flashiest, not the “sexiest,” and not the latest trend.

Most of the battle is getting out of bed and doing. Most of the battle is putting your foot through the door and your effort into your work.

Most of the battle is forgotten or ignored because it’s easier to instead thrust recognition on the outliers.

So to end this post, all I have to say is this: thank you. You know who you are. And you can do it. I appreciate what you put into the world, and I appreciate what it is you give ME on a daily basis. And the reason I can’t name you is because it is so many of you I can’t begin. What you all give me matters. I read a million blogs. I star a million things. I am indebted to the intelligence of other librarians, of other bloggers, of other people in the book world. Without their savvy, their individual insights and perspectives, their support, their willingness to give and give and give without any expectation of return, I sure wouldn’t be as interested in giving of myself or thinking about things outside of an echo chamber or, or, or . . .

Now you turn and do the same thing. Let someone know how special they are. How what they do matters. How you recognize them as individuals.

* You get the reference, right?

A silly dream of being in print achieved!

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I think I’ve talked about how I wanted to grow up to be a journalist. Even had a job offer when I was a senior in college to do just that. But for many reasons, I didn’t pursue it. I went into librarianship instead.

These things aren’t actually separate in and of themselves. I got into writing for the newspaper in high school and then in college by talking about books. I used to review books in both high school and in college. I’ve reread some of what I’ve written about in the past — Truman Capote, Haruki Murakami, even a really cool piece about ghost writers is still hanging around somewhere — and it makes sense how I got into blogging and into librarianship.

One of my little dreams has been to write about books for a newspaper again, even if only once.

That dream came true a couple weeks ago. The Wisconsin State Journal does a weekly column called “Just Read It,” where they have people around the state involved in the book world — as authors, as advocates, as librarians — talk about three books within their field. I got to write for it!

I decided to go for writing about my three favorite books of 2012 that weren’t landing on all of the “best of YA” lists in every other publication out there.

The column is in print editions of today’s Sunday Journal in the “Sunday Best” section. It’s above the fold. It includes images of the books. And my headshot!

You should be able to read it if you click on the image. If not, this will run in the digital version of the paper and when it goes live, I’ll link it here.

Seriously though. It’s such a little thing but it is so neat. I know how much people still read the paper and then clip these things and bring them into the library. So to think maybe someone reads a book I recommended somewhere in the great state of Wisconsin is neat.

Maybe someday that bigger dream of writing for a print publication more than once will come true.