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Titles of Familiar Tunes

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I don’t know about you, but there are certain book titles that when I read them, a song pops into my head and will not go away. It doesn’t matter how different the book is from the song — and most of the time they’re not at all related — the tune sticks in my head.

Here’s a handful of YA books that share their titles with a song. Of course, this wouldn’t be a complete post without including the song, would it? All book descriptions come from WorldCat.

Please chime in with your favorites because I know we have missed quite a few!

With or Without You by Brian Farrey (2011)

When eighteen-year-old best friends Evan and Davis of Madison,
Wisconsin, join a community center group called “chasers” to gain
acceptance and knowledge of gay history, there may be fatal
consequences.

I went through a huge U2 phase in high school, and With or Without You (1987) is one of their classics.

 
Unbreak My Heart by Melissa Walker (2012)

Taking the family sailboat on a summer-long trip excites everyone
except sixteen-year-old Clementine, who feels stranded with her parents
and younger sister and guilty over a falling-out with her best friend.

Let’s listen to Toni Braxton’s take on Unbreak My Heart (1996)

 

Don’t Turn Around by Michelle Gagnon (2012)

After waking up on an operating table with no memory of how she got
there, Noa must team up with computer hacker Peter to stop a corrupt
corporation with a deadly secret. Kimberly reviewed this title earlier this summer.

Who could forget that Ace of Base told us Don’t Turn Around in 1994?

 

 

Take a Bow by Elizabeth Eulberg (2012)

Emme, Sophie, Ethan, and Carter are seniors at a performing arts high
school in New York City, preparing for the senior recital and feeling
the pressure to perform well and take the next step in their careers and
their lives–whether they want to or not.

Madonna’s Take a Bow (1994) is one of my favorite of her songs and videos.

 

Across the Universe by Beth Revis (2011)

Seventeen-year-old Amy joins her parents as frozen cargo aboard the vast
spaceship Godspeed and expects to awaken on a new planet 300 years in
the future, but 50 years before the ship’s scheduled landing, Amy is
violently woken from her frozen slumber. Kim’s reviewed this title, too.

Of course, the Beatles also told us what’s up Across the Universe in 1968.

Let me indulge on this for a second and also share one of my favorite covers of this song by Fiona Apple, recorded for the movie Pleasantville in 1998.

 

Never is a Promise by Emily Hainsworth (2013)


Because this is a fall 2013 release — a year from now — there’s not a description yet. But since we were on the topic of Fiona Apple, I had to include this title so you could get the ear worm going.


Fiona Apple’s rendition of Never is a Promise (1998):




 Inside Out by Maria Snyder (2010)

“…I’m Trella. I’m a scrub. A nobody. One of thousands who work the
lower levels, keeping inside clean for the Uppers. I’ve got one friend,
do my job, and try to avoid the Pop Cops. So what if I occasionally use
the pipes to sneak around the Upper levels. The only neck at risk is my
own…until I accidentally start a rebellion and become the go-to-girl
to lead a revolution”

Did anyone else love Eve 6’s Inside Out (1998) as much as Kim and I did?

 

I Swear by Lane Davis (2012)

After Leslie Gatlin kills herself, her bullies reflect on how things got
so far. This looks like it might make an interesting read-alike to Butter, even though they tackle slightly different issues surrounding bullying.

Here’s another two-for-one song for you. First, here are Boyz 2 Men singing I Swear with a little rhythm in 1994:

Let us not forget that at the same time, John Michael Montgomery offered us the country version of I Swear.

 

Fall for Anything by Courtney Summers (2010)

As she searches for clues that would explain the suicide of her
successful photographer father, Eddie Reeves meets the strangely
compelling Culler Evans who seems to know a great deal about her father
and could hold the key to the mystery surrounding his death.  I reviewed this title.




The Script reminds us we shouldn’t Fall for Anything in 2008.

Courtney pointed out Jeremy Fisher’s Fall for Anything, too (I hadn’t heard this one):

Cruel Summer by Alyson Noel (2008)

Ditching her best friend to become a member of the popular clique in
high school, Colby’s priorities change after spending the summer on a
Greek island and sharing an intense relationship with a local boy. Told
through letters, postcards, e-mails, and journal and blog entries.

Much as I want to embed Ace of Base’s rendition of this song, I’m resisting. Enjoy Bananarama’s 1983 Cruel Summer. 

It appears that 1994 was quite a rich year for titles, and it looks like 2012 is the year for borrowing titles, too. One of my goals some day is to blog about another interesting song trend that I think is fitting in some way to YA books, and that’s the number of songs that are about being 17 or the meaning of being 17.

Hit us with your best YA title sharing its name with a song we can find on YouTube in the comments.

Links of Note

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Ready for this biweekly edition of Links of Note? It seems like there are lots of interesting and provocative pieces about libraries this go around. Also a lot of great groan-worthy stories!

  • The year is 1937. Do you know the rules of the library? Check out the gallery of images of expected behavior in the reading room from this period in time on Galleycat. I think a lot of these images are actually still relevant — especially the rules on the left here. 

  • I’m really fascinated by this piece — how do you make a book disappear completely? Can you? The Atlantic talks about how Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine seemingly disappeared, even with all the technology available to us now.  
  • I like this book list of novels in verse by the topics they delve into. I’m stuck on the notion that these are controversial topics — simply because something is a part of reality, I have a hard time labeling it as controversial — but the list is pretty darn good and current. 
  • One of the perks of living in a world where anyone can start a book review blog, can post a review on Goodreads or Amazon or B&N, is that we can get a wide range of review styles. But over at The Millions, there’s an interesting essay about the anatomy of a book review, and I like the points about how reviewers sometimes need to step back and figure out if it is the book or if it is them personally. Like I said though, the nice thing about online reviews is you can choose which ones you read based on the person writing them if you want.
  • Over at the Christchurch City Libraries blog, there’s an interesting recap of a book event that raises the question of whether or not the term YA is creating a barrier for teen readers. I pretty much think this is a big nothing, but it’s an interesting read nonetheless.  
    • Hey, is young adult fiction the new chick lit? Good grief, people. Can we move on from labeling everything? Or how about more importantly, this doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t even link this because it’s nothing but bait, but it’s just so dumb I can’t help myself. 
    • The Huffington Post Books section muses about what your favorite book says about you. I guess if your favorite book is one of the eight they feature, then you can learn a lot. And if not, you pick the closest one. They acknowledge their sweeping generalizations, by the way. 
    • YALSA wants feedback from members AND non-members about how they can be better. Go answer their survey. It was painless.     
    • I took part in a science book club in college, where we read non-fiction titles that had some basis in science/health/medicine, and one of the titles I remember reading and enjoying was The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. The New York Times reports that Lia Lee, who was the center of the story, has died from her illness. I hope this book gets another update because I want to know more of her story.

    • The articles over at The Atlantic Wire about YA are getting more and more obnoxious. This week’s installment was on why adults are reading YA books. I keep linking these and I don’t know why. Their YA expert is just not. 

    I’m so excited about this upcoming week, I can hardly stand it. Kid Lit Con is Friday and Saturday, and aside from the presentation (which is coming together so well!), I’m excited to touch base with people I rarely get to see. I’ve made dates for tea and for gelato, and I am eager to experience New York City outside of Book Expo America. If you’re going to Kid Lit Con, I can’t wait to meet you, and if you’re not — I’ll definitely have a post or two to share with take aways. 

    Diverse Energies edited by Tobias S. Buckell and Joe Monti

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    The concept behind Diverse Energies, a YA science fiction (mostly dystopian-esque) short story collection from Lee and Low, is admirable: all stories feature a person of color, something often lacking in the SFF world. The result, however, is a bit uneven. While some stories are interesting and well written, some are duds in either the plot or writing aspect (and sometimes both). I find that this is my normal reaction to short story collections on the whole, so it’s not unique to this anthology.
    The Highs
    Good Girl by Malinda Lo
    This was my favorite of the stories. It’s difficult to squeeze in significant character development in a short story while also keeping the plot interesting, but Lo manages it with aplomb. In her vision of the future, the government rules the everyday lives of normal people, even mandating what job they will work at. They’re also obsessed with racial purity, mandating sterilization for anyone who gives birth to a mixed-race baby. Lo’s protagonist is one of these children. Her older brother has gone missing, and she travels to the tunnels beneath the city for clues to his whereabouts. There, she finds a group of people who may be willing to help her – or may just want to hurt her. She also uncovers secrets, which I always love in my dystopias.  
    Gods of Dimming Light by Greg van Eekhout
    This story gets major points for creativity. In van Eekhout’s future, permanent winter has descended upon the world, bringing with it poverty and starvation. His teenage protagonist, desperate for money and work, answers an advertisement for a paid medical study. Naturally, he gets much more than he bargained for, including a forced fight with an ancient Norse god. The storytelling is terrific and the concept is very cool. (You may all laugh at my pun now.)


    Solitude by Ursula LeGuin
    Buckell and Monti knew what they were doing when they chose to close the anthology with Le Guin’s story, which was previously published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1994. She puts most of these authors to shame with both writing and concept – but that’s not a knock on the other authors, it’s simply a testament to Le Guin’s skill. She’s the master.
    The Lows
    Pattern Recognition by Ken Liu
    Liu has a great concept with his story – poor children who have the ability to recognize patterns in ways that computers can’t are taken from their homes and kept as near-slaves, forced to work for a corporation and told the “outside” no longer exists – but it seems to be purposely told out of order, which was an odd choice. The story itself is divided into three sections which I believe skipped around in time some. I’m actually not quite clear, since the jumps aren’t explained contextually (at least not thoroughly enough for my liking). The climax of the story is in letter form, which is disappointing – it could have been great as a bit of action, but instead is reduced to telling instead of showing.
    Next Door by Rahul Kanakia
    Parts of Kanakia’s story are interesting, but mostly it was too muddled for me to make sense of it. As a result, I got no clear idea of character or meaning. In Kanakia’s future, the upper class is so plugged in to their electronics that they don’t notice when the lower class move into their homes. Kanakia’s protagonist belongs to this lower class, and he’s desperate to find a place for his family to live that isn’t riddled with bugs. The garage they’re currently living in belongs to an upper class family, but this particular family is at least clued-in enough to notice when they try to move in to the main house. So, that’s out. What follows is the protag’s search for a new home with his boyfriend and a run-in with the upper class family’s son, who has goals of his own. I can’t explain much beyond that because I didn’t quite get it.
    I realize in my reviews of the two previous stories that I may come across as not a very careful reader. I assure you I am, and I assure you I read portions of each of these stories twice in an effort to understand them and ensure I was being fair to them. It’s a tricky task to cram a creative, SF concept into a dozen or so pages, and the two authors above just didn’t succeed at it. (Insert obligatory ymmv note here.)
    The rest of the stories fell squarely in the middle for me, both in terms of writing and plot. I’ve yet to read an anthology that satisfied me completely with every story. Moreover, I’ve yet to read an anthology where I even mildly enjoyed every story, but that’s just the nature of anthologies. You read through the mediocre ones to get to the gems, and you hope you’re so blown away that it was all worth it. I wouldn’t call Diverse Energies a rousing success, but it will definitely appeal to readers interested in SF shorts. The fact that it features a diverse cast of characters is just icing.
    Review copy provided by the publisher. Diverse Energies is available October 1.

    Skinny by Donna Cooner & My Big Fat Manifesto by Susan Vaught

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    I wanted to run lengthier reviews of each of these books, but because their themes are overlapping and tackled in such different ways, I thought it was more worthwhile to talk about them together. Both Skinny and My Big Fat Manifesto delve into gastric bypass surgery for teens — Cooner’s title exploring it from the first-hand experience and Vaught’s exploring it at a distance. 

    Fifteen year old Ever is fat. Over 300 pounds fat. Everyone knows it. And the reason she is fat is because of losing her mother, combined with the new family acquired through her father’s relationship with a new woman (who brought children to the mix). She took up eating for comfort and as a way to grieve the losses and changes in her life.

    It’s more than that, though. Ever’s struggling with an internal voice named Skinny which constantly reminds her she’s fat. That she’s not good enough. That she’ll never be good enough. It finally reaches a point where Ever can’t take it any longer, and she makes the decision to seek out gastric bypass as a means of combating her weight issue. Her dad and step mother are more than supportive of the decision, even if all three of them are worried about what the surgery and future consequences of that surgery may be.

    Post-operation, Ever begins dropping weight immediately. It’s not necessarily easy adapting to the new lifestyle, but she’s doing what she has to in order to attain the body she’s hoped for. And bonus! Now that she’s losing weight, she’s catching the attention of not only a boy she’s always been interested in, but she’s also fitting in with the popular kids. They want to make her over, too, and help her become the gorgeous girl she’s always wanted to be.

    This is a Cinderella story.

    Skinny did not work for me on many levels. First, there is a problem when as readers, we’re asked to simply accept things as they are when those things are the crux of the problem. Ever is fat. She eats because she’s grieving. That’s just how it is. Except, we never actually see this happen in the story. We’re told that she’s a chronic over eater and she does so to comfort herself, but we never see it happen. Ever never tells us why she’s seeking food for comfort. She never gives us a reason to emotionally invest in her challenge and as readers, we’re so far removed from the struggle that there’s no reason to buy into it at all. It is what it is and nothing more.

    More troubling, though, was there was no attempt at seeking alternate options for weight loss before the gastric bypass option occurred. There was discussion about things Ever had tried in the past — dieting, exercising — but never do readers see this happen. When Ever goes in for a consultation about bypass, there’s no discussion about seeing a nutritionist, about getting on a regiment of diet and exercise, of making true lifestyle changes. For all that her family pushed for her to change, there was no action on their part to support a change in lifestyle so that she could change. Instead, it’s immediately to surgery. Let’s remember that Ever is 15. That’s a hell of a solution for someone so young, particularly when the long-term effects of surgery like this aren’t clear. And Ever is still in the midst of puberty, too, so her body isn’t even fully developed. That the physician and surgeons don’t worry about this and neither does anyone else (save Ever’s friend who is pretty much a cardboard character throughout anyway) rubs me so wrong as a reader. It suggests this is the solution, rather than a final solution to turn to.

    Cooner’s book is full of the stereotypes of fat people that bother me as a reader. Ever is defined as angry — by other people who see her as that way — and she’s given contradictory messages by friends and family. Her father loves her and wants her to lose weight, but he doesn’t actually help her. Her stepsister wants nothing to do with her until she loses weight and post-operation, they’re suddenly close. It’s when she loses that weight — when she’s almost regaled as a hero for having surgery to rid herself of her fat — that she becomes human to anyone else around her. When she becomes the hero of the story. When people open up about the horrible stereotypes they had about her fat body defining her. It comes too late for the reader, though, because Ever is nothing but the fat stereotype throughout the story. There’s not a payoff in the end when she’s thin and well-liked. And even Skinny, that voice in her head, agrees. Skinny reminds her that she’s still the same person she was when she was fat. Except now she’s not fat.

    Unfortunately, that same person at 185 pounds is just as uninteresting, flat, and frustrating as she was at 300+ pounds. She’s still a fat stereotype, albeit dressed better because of her popular friends. And of course — spoiler — she “earns” the boyfriend reward.

    Skinny was the most realistic aspect of the story, and I think readers will relate to that voice in their heads. However, the rest of the book fails to deliver. Ever is only ever in this to please everyone else, and the solution is far too easy. There’s not depth of character nor is there much story arc. Skinny doesn’t get across what it intended too because it relied too hard on social beliefs, rather than on true character motivations and beliefs. It’s too easy to accept things here simply because it’s what we’re told to accept in the world around us. As such, we lose sight of the character and connection readers should make to that character, whatever size she may be.

    While reading Skinny, I was dying to read a book where the fat girl doesn’t hate herself. Where she’s okay with who she is and how she looks and forget what others think of her. That’s when I was directed to Susan Vaught’s My Big Fat Manifesto. I’m so glad this book landed in my hands because it was a breath of fresh air.

    Jamie is a fat girl. She’s completely fine being that way. So fine, in fact, she chooses to write about her body and her life as a fat girl for the school’s newspaper. It’s sort of her way of working through her own feelings and a way for other people to understand that the way she looks isn’t a reflection of what she is at the core. Jamie is a girl after my own heart.

    However, her life is far from perfect. Jamie is an insecure person, and it’s nothing to do with her weight. She’s insecure about her future, about what she was to pursue after high school (she wants to get into a tough university which is part of why she’s writing the column in the first place), and she’s insecure about her relationship with Burke.

    Burke is himself obese, and as a means of trying to combat this in his life, he’s choosing to pursue gastric bypass surgery. This, of course, is not something Jamie would want to happen. Jamie is herself secure in her body and she’s secure with Burke and his body, too. Except — this isn’t Jamie’s choice. It’s Burke’s alone. And while he pursues this option, she’d finding herself questioning much about what this means for him, what it means for her, and what it means for their relationship in general. Burke’s not going to have a Cinderella transformation. He’s not doing this to gain popularity or status. He’s doing it so he can have a better shot at a healthy future when other means of weight loss have failed him.

    Vaught handles the topic with sensitivity but she doesn’t shy away from graphic detail. Bypass surgery is far from pretty, and the consequences of the surgery include a lot of unsavory things. Burke experiences them, and through Jamie, we do, too. It’s through these moments where — despite feeling like she’s an expert on body image and body acceptance — Jamie really does learn what a body means and what the implications of being fat truly are. It’s here where she realizes that everyone accepts and rejects certain aspects of what their bodies are personally and that’s just what it is: personal. In other words, she can’t judge Burke for his decision to pursue surgery. What he chooses to do with his body and how he chooses to lose weight is something that impacts him, and it impacts him on the superficial, exterior level only. The same goes for her body and what she chooses to believe about it. In other words, as much as Jamie is wise in her columns about accepting and loving herself as a fat person, and as much as she preaches tolerance toward those of different shapes, it’s not until she’s faced with someone close to her not feeling the way she does that she realizes her words carry a hell of a lot more meaning to them.

    My Big Fat Manifesto is empowering. Jamie is a fantastic character who starts the book strong, but ends it even stronger. This is a book about choices and about growth, about understanding and acceptance and tolerance. It’s also about love on a very personal level. Jamie is open about how having a fat body doesn’t limit her from doing anything, despite what other people think. She talks about things like sex pretty openly — just because a person is fat doesn’t mean they don’t have the same physical needs and or experience physical enjoyment the way anyone else may. She pushes back against the stereotypes that books like Skinny too readily embrace. There’s an entire passage where Jamie is confronted about being an angry girl because of her column. Jamie’s response is that she’s not at all angry. That she’s simply putting into words truths of her life. She’s fat. That’s all it is.

    Even though we don’t experience gastric bypass first hand in this book through Burke, we do experience it through Jamie and that’s enough to give an idea of how huge an issue it is. It’s not an easy or light choice. The consequences are far reaching, and it’s not simply consequences of how much a person can or cannot eat anymore. Consequences revolve around body acceptance, tolerance, and appropriateness, too. I appreciate how this book doesn’t fall into a trap where Burke’s decision comes down to how other people view him; he doesn’t choose surgery to fit in. Rather, it’s about his health and his future. About how he needs to take charge of his life and decisions now, rather than put them off and suffer consequences other people in his life have. It’s about Burke’s needs and choice. Just like Jamie’s body tolerance and her embracing of her fatness are hers.

    Vaught’s book and Simmone Howell’s Everything Beautiful are two stand outs when it comes to fat acceptance and tolerance. Both books feature girls who are overweight but don’t hate themselves because of it. They feature girls who are overweight but don’t let other people’s judgments change their perceptions of who they are at the heart. Do all books featuring fat people need to have this message? Absolutely not — it’s unrealistic. But there needs to be a balance between offering up stereotypes and conveniences, of showing an easy out and an easy way to be accepted socially, of playing into what society tells us is wrong and gross about one’s body with true portrayals of whole, thoughtful, and feeling characters. There needs to be arc to a story and an arc to a character. Not just an arc to a body.  

    Skinny was received from the publisher and will be available October 1. My Big Fat Manifesto was picked up from the library and is available now. 

    Erasing Time by C. J. Hill

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    The concept of Erasing Time is so cool: teenage twins Sheridan and Taylor are taken from the present day into the far future by mistake and must learn how to survive in a world that is very, very different (and dangerous). The people who brought them to the future were intending to bring forward a brilliant (adult) scientist, but instead got the twins, and they’re not sure what to do with them now that they have them. There’s no possibility of a return trip.

    The story is told mostly from the perspective of Sheridan, who is the more “average” of the twins. Taylor has always been the brilliant twin, the science whiz who graduated high school at an incredibly early age, went on to college, and is now studying for her PhD at age 18. Sheridan is smart, but no matter how smart she is, she feels that she’ll always pale in comparison to Taylor, who is also very outgoing.

    The two girls must learn to work together to manage the situation they find themselves in. They have an ally – maybe – in Echo, a boy from the future whose job it is to translate the future English into the past English and vice versa. When the twins discover that the scientists from the future plan to fix their mistake by giving the girls memory washes, they go on the run, with the help of Echo.

    I love reading books about the future in part because it’s always interesting to see what one person thinks that future will look like. Hill’s future is curious. People live in isolated cities, basically domes, ostensibly for their own safety, and they have no interaction with the outside world. Everyone has an ID chip implanted in their bodies, almost no buildings have actual walls, religion has been outlawed, and our system of government has been completely eliminated. There are different factions within the city, too – such as the dangerous Dakine, who use violence to achieve their goals, and the more benign “Doctor Worshippers,” whose name actually means something very different from what it sounds like.
    The government tells citizens that natural plant and animal life no longer exist, and they’re nowhere to be found in the city. One of the most amusing parts of the book is when Echo tells the girls that the reason animals are now extinct is because the people in Sheridan and Taylor’s time ate them all. (Taylor is quick to point out to Sheridan that complete extinction of non-human animal life is impossible, since it would make human life impossible as well.) Actually, there are a lot of moments where the future culture has interpreted our current culture incorrectly, and it leads to most of the story’s laughs.
    The way Hill uses language is interesting. The gap between future English and current English seems to be about the same as the gap between current English and Middle English – gibberish initially, but understandable once you practice at it. To make telling the story simpler, Hill doesn’t actually write out what the future English must sound like – she “translates” it for us via Echo, and once the girls learn to understand it, she “translates” it via them too. Hill also uses current English idioms to great effect, as a way for the twins to talk to each other without the future people knowing what they are really saying. I thought the language issue was an interesting touch, and it’s a problem I’ve always wondered about when reading stories set in the far future.
    I think there are a lot of neat ideas in this book, but they aren’t executed terribly well. I’m a little unsure why the scientists from the future wanted to bring a scientist from today forward. It’s explained in the book, but not in a completely understandable way. I also think a couple of obvious secrets are withheld too long, making their ultimate revelations underwhelming. 
    Mostly, I wanted more of a story. With the whole future world at her disposal, it seems like Hill told a rather pedestrian, small kind of story – Taylor and Sheridan must elude those who are out to get them, with the help of a boy from the future. I suppose I wanted more intrigue and excitement and less talking and pontificating. I wanted to see more of the future world through Sheridan and Taylor’s eyes, know more about the Dakine, and so on. Erasing Time ultimately left me unsatisfied. Still, it held my attention and should appeal to fans of time travel stories.
    Review copy provided by the publisher. Erasing Time is available now.