STACKED

books

Guest Review: Paul Stenis on The Fourth Stall, Part II

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Last year, Paul Stenis — a fellow Texas library school alum and kid lit writer — stopped by to write up a review of Chris Rylander’s middle grade novel The Fourth Stall. When we were asked if we’d be interested in reviewing the sequel, of course we had to go back to Paul and ask if he’d offer up his thoughts. He agreed! Without further ado, we welcome Paul back to talk about The Fourth Stall, Part II.

Chris Rylander’s sequel to The Fourth Stall, the aptly titled The Fourth Stall Part II, is a worthy successor to the original. Young readers again hang out in the head of Christian “Mac” Barrett, wily sixth grader, expert problem solver, and comic genius. This time Mac faces problems with more severe consequences, but the sense of humor is the same.

The novel opens when Trixie Von Parkway, a pretty, sharp-witted eighth-grade girl marches into Mac’s office in the fourth stall of the abandoned school bathroom. Not only is she demanding and kind of mean, she has a pretty big problem. One of the new teachers, Mr. Kjelson, always chews her out and gives her detention for no reason, and Trixie wants it to stop. Mac and Vince agree to take the case only to learn that 1) Mr. Kjelson is beloved to his students, 2) he loves their favorite baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, and 3) he coaches the school baseball team. The very same baseball team that Mac and Vince are trying out for.

If that weren’t enough, a new school administrator gets wind of Mac’s business and makes it his personal mission to take it down. Trixie’s stories no longer seem to add up, even as Mac and Vince find themselves competing for her attention. Could a dame like her come between our favorite pair of die- hard Cubs fans?

I found this review difficult to write because this book is so similar to its predecessor. Because of that, rather than in spite of it, I enjoyed this book just as much. I imagine that other readers will agree that the central joke—a sixth grader in a Godfather-type role, speaking with a Godfather-like voice doesn’t wear thin. Rather than returning to the well for the same jokes, Rylander grounds his humor in fresh situations, and that keeps both Mac and the reader on their toes.

If I have a complaint, it’s that Mac makes a poor decision in this book, a decision that leads to consequences that could have been more fully explored. I’m being vague to avoid spoilers, yes, but I think any discerning reader will do a double take and think, “Wait a minute. Mac wouldn’t do that.” It’s one of the only times in either book that Mac makes a mistake, so it feels like a missed opportunity when he’s let off the hook with only a few harsh words. On the other hand, maybe we’re seeing a new side to Mac’s personality—a side that Rylander can explore in a third installment. I hope so.

Review copy received from the publisher. The Fourth Stall: Part II is available now!

Childhood faves, grown-up disappointments

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I’m always a little trepidatious when I decide to re-read a book I loved as a kid. Will the magic still be there for adult me, or will it have disappeared with my childhood? Fortunately, most of them have held up for me: The Giver, Wizard of Oz, The Golden Compass, Harry Potter, On Fortune’s Wheel… Every once in a while, though, I re-read a childhood favorite and it just doesn’t hold up. Not only does adult me not love the book, sometimes I don’t even like it anymore.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
This is the strongest example I have of this phenomenon. How I wish I loved this book as an adult as much as I did when I was a kid. I re-read it as an assignment while an undergraduate, and it didn’t even feel like the book I remembered. The story in my memory was much less piecemeal (the book now feels like more of a short story collection than a novel) and much less didactic. Alcott’s narrative voice intruded so much it pretty much ruined the experience for me. As an adult, I felt like I was being taught lesson after lesson. None of that came through to me as a child, and I wonder just how oblivious I was at the age I first read it. It seems so overbearing to me now.
Forever by Judy Blume
I think almost all women who were teens after 1975 have fond memories of covertly reading this book. Perhaps it was hidden under your bed, or passed around at slumber party, or shared at the lunch table amid many giggles (in my case). A friend brought it to school and had dog-eared the interesting bits (one word: Ralph). The next natural step was to hunt down the book at the public library, which had it in the adult section at the time. (I looked it up in the library’s catalog today, expecting to see that it had been moved to YA, but both copies are still in adult.) Honestly, it’s not that racy, but it was certainly the raciest thing I had read so far. On re-read, I mostly just found the book a little dull. As an adult, I’m not into teen romances, and there wasn’t much to hold my interest here. Plus, since I had read plenty of adult romances by the time I re-read it, the interesting bits weren’t so interesting anymore.
These are my two most prominent examples. Other books I’ve re-read have been disappointing, but my opinion on them hasn’t been reversed quite so strongly. And in both Little Women‘s and Forever‘s defense, I can remember why child/teen Kimberly liked them so much, and I can understand why they are important books.
Do you have any childhood favorites that failed to live up to your memories of them upon re-read?

White Cat by Holly Black

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I think one of the best things about participating as a judge in the Cybils this year is that I’ve read some good books I would otherwise not have picked up on my own. White Cat is one of those (its sequel, Red Glove, is a Cybils finalist). 
Cassel Sharpe lives in a world where certain people have the ability to perform curses – death workers can kill people, memory workers can erase or modify memories, emotion workers can create false emotions in others, and so on. Curse working is illegal, which has led to the formation of a mafia made up of curse workers. Not all curse workers are bad people, but this mafia certainly does bad things, much like our own world’s magic-free mafia does.
Cassel is the only member of his family who isn’t a curse worker, and he’s of two minds about it. He’d really like to distance himself from his family, almost all of whom work for the Zacharov crime family, but at the same time, he wants to be accepted by them, which he’s sure will never happen.
Cassel’s lack of ability isn’t his biggest problem, though. No, that would be Lila Zacharov, Cassel’s best friend and the daughter of the crime boss. The problem with Lila is that Cassel killed her – on accident, of course. His two older brothers covered for him, but as you can imagine, Cassel is more than a little torn up about it.
So that’s the background, and I feel like you get the gist of what the story is like if you know at least that much, plus the fact that this is, at heart, a story about con artists and their cons. I’ve always loved stories about con jobs and heists and other trickery where the reader roots for the lawbreaker. More than anything else, they are just plain fun, and sometimes that’s just what I need in a book. (Ally Carter’s Heist Society books are great for this.) The characters are untrustworthy, the cons are creative and clever, and the story is fast paced. All three of these things put together means that there’s always a surprise lurking behind the next page.
Combining a con story with magic works well in White Cat. It’s one of those stories where I didn’t feel like the magic was a cheat to get the characters out of scrapes. In many cases, the magic could actually make things worse. One of the most important aspects of curse-working is the blowback:a curse-worker performs a curse, and a part of that power rebounds back at the caster. Magic backlash is certainly not a new concept, but I like how Black implemented it here, particularly with the death workers. (Cassel’s grandfather, a death worker, is missing fingers.)
It reminded me a little bit of All These Things I’ve Done – fictional mafia, a hint of the fantastic, and the teen caught up in it – but White Cat is more overtly a fantasy. The stakes also seem a bit higher in White Cat. Obviously I can’t say too much without giving things away, but I can say that Black is not afraid to let her good characters do bad things, and this includes Cassel. (Her bad characters and her neutral characters do bad things too, naturally.)
I wouldn’t call the writing outstanding, but it does the job of telling the story and gives Cassel a good voice – I believed him as a teenager in that position, and I appreciated his self-deprecating, gallows-esque sense of humor.
There’s a pretty big worldbuilding hole that another reader pointed out to me after I had read the book. I can’t share it without spoiling a major plot point, but I will say I was completely oblivious to it until I was told about it. Which is not to say it’s unimportant; worldbuilding is always important in a fantasy novel. But it certainly doesn’t ruin the enjoyment.

Books, Reading, and Pinterest

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If you spend any time on social media at all, you know that Pinterest has captured the attention of a lot of people. It’s even had an entire series of posts written about it up at readwriteweb (read through all of the links — Pinterest grabbed a lot of attention over at rww). Tracey Neithercott’s talked about how she uses Pinterest for writing inspiration, while Whitney over at Youth Services Corner has talked about using Pinterest for youth programming idea inspiration. Oh, and a little news site called CNN’s talked about Pinterest being the hottest website of 2012.

I stumbled upon Pinterest last summer and used it as visual bookmarking and little more. I made up boards for recipes I wanted to try, boards for program ideas I’d like to try out at the library, some DIY stuff for myself, and more. I’m very much a visual person, so actually being able to SEE all of these bookmarks visually excites me. You can install a pinning button right onto your browser, so when you open up a blog post with a recipe that interests you, you can click the button and pin it without having to toggle between a number of different tabs.

Being that Pinterest is a social network, you can follow people whose pins interest you (and you can choose to follow specific boards of those people, rather than everything they pin). You can also choose to browse through the things everyone using Pinterest has pinned.

Pinterest thrives on the principle of discovery — the whole purpose of a site like Pinterest is that it leads to spontaneous finding of things you didn’t know you were looking for. It’s similar to how if you wander into a library and stumble upon book displays. You’re browsing without a clear goal in mind, and you’re picking up things along the way you didn’t know you were looking for. This is fundamentally different from, say, Google, where you have to actually use the site with a goal in mind. You’re not going to stumble upon a recipe or a youth programming idea without first putting a specific keyword search into Google, but on Pinterest, you can. Whether or not you know it, the internet’s moving more toward this discovery model of information retrieval, and sites like Pinterest are doing a good job making it happen.

For a long time, I avoided putting any of my own stuff up at Pinterest. It felt totally self-indulgent to create boards about, say, my book lists here at STACKED or create boards about books I love. Pinterest never seemed like a site about me, and I’m always on the fence about self-promotional stuff. A few months back, I discovered I could see what other people on Pinterest were pinning from the blog, and it was amazing to see people were actually saving things from STACKED (anyone who runs a website or blog can find out too — just swap out stackedbooks.org from that link and input your own site address). You can also see on your main Pinterest page what items from your own boards people have “repinned” onto their boards.

I’ve watched people like Leila use Pinterest to develop boards about book awards and book lists and link to their relevant reviews, and I started thinking about how Pinterest boards about books reminds me visually of a book display. Then I got to wondering what the potential spread of pinning books could be, given that all the things I pin will move to the main page and anyone who uses Pinterest can see these things. It was time to test this out.

Not everything I read ends up being blogged about here, but everything I read I do record on GoodReads. When I end up writing a review for STACKED and it posts, I head over there and link it. I decided in my grand experiment to use my personal GoodReads reviews as the pins.

I created three book-related boards: 2012 Books Read, Favorite books (must reads), and YA Booklists. The first two lists relied entirely on my GoodReads review links, while the final list was made up of the book lists I’ve made for our “Display This” series. With each list, I linked to a cover image and wrote a very short blurb about each of the books I included — I literally wrote the title, the author, and a quick reaction or thought on the title (if it was in the favorite books category). There is space, of course, to write a lot more about each of these items, but my goal was simply to see what kind of immediate spread these pins would have and whether it was worth pursuing this down the road.

After less than an hour, let me just say I am impressed.

This is only a snapshot of the activity other people have had with my Pinterest boards, but take a look at it for a second. In under an hour, my pin of Courtney Summers’s This is Not a Test garnered 10 repins and a number of “likes” (which, I’m not entirely sure what that DOES in Pinterest, but there it is). None of the people who repinned that pin are people who I follow or who follow me. My pin of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood captured 5 repins in the same time frame, and about 75% of the books and book lists I pinned were either repinned or earned a “like” from people with whom I have absolutely no relation. In under an hour. You don’t see that kind of response on a site like GoodReads because GoodReads, unlike Pinterest, is more dependent upon the search method of use. Your friends can see what you’re reading and reviewing, but not ALL of GoodReads can as easily as ALL of Pinterest can. The ten pins my original pin of the Summers book refer only to my original pin; it’s possible and quite likely that those ten people encouraged ten more pins, increasing my reach much, much beyond my own pin.

Let me repeat: in under one hour, the books I pinned into three different boards captured the attention of Pinterest users I have no relation to whatsoever. They found my pins through the main Pinterest page, and they were interested enough to save them and comment upon them. Now they’ve saved a link to not only a book cover, but also they have a link to my book review. I’m able to drive interest not only to the material at hand (the book), but also my own commentary on the material at hand.

I’m going to say that I expect these things to spread further over the next day or two, the next week or two, the next month or two, and they’ll continue to spread as long as people continue to use Pinterest as a tool of spontaneous discovery. If my goal as a book blogger is to spread the word about books (and simultaneously get people to read my opinion on these books), then I’m sold on the two seconds it takes to add my reviews to Pinterest, as well as the other places I post them. I’m reaching an entirely new and different audience — one that doesn’t necessarily engage with book blogs — and I’m able to pique the interest of new readers. I’m already thinking about the possibilities when it comes to things like the “So You Wanna Read YA?” series and how pinning those posts onto Pinterest can lead new readers to YA books (because it targets many of them specifically).

For what it’s worth, Pinterest is invite-only, but it’s easy to track down people who can hook you up with an invite — I’ve apparently got an unlimited supply as an early adopter. It’s a potential time suck in terms of finding content, but that’s the entire point (and it makes me smile when people talk about spending all day on Pinterest because that’s the entire principle behind a web discovery tool like it). There is a lot of junk to wade through on the site, especially if you wade through everyone’s pins, rather than just those pins or boards of people you follow. But you can make this site work for you and for the books you want to promote.

Rather than leave you on that note and encourage you to think about using it if you’re into books, I’ll give you some straight up ideas for how to use it. Why not develop a board of your favorite books? You’re creating a content-controlled favorite list and it makes it easy for other people to find potential “best” books and repin for their own sake. Why not develop book lists on specific subjects? I could see the value in having it become added or enhanced content for a blogger or as a way to gather material for a blog post. I’m toying with developing a series of boards about contemporary YA fiction that feature specific thematics (to go along with my database project). Whether or not people follow the boards wholly, there are people who will still find new books through the pins.

You could pin books that feature certain cover elements that are all the same (sad girls in pretty dresses, the almost-kiss face, covers that are all yellow, etc). You can pin books that pique your interest from other bloggers and generate interest that way. You can take a page out of Leila’s book and pin your reviews of award-winning books or use Pinterest as a way to keep yourself on track in different reading challenges or goals. You’re not only reaching your followers on Pinterest; you’re reaching potentially everyone who uses the site. Another bonus — at least in my experience — is the setup of Pinterest also seems to make images appear higher within the Google image search algorithm, meaning you may also be reaching people via traditional search methods.

If you’re on Pinterest, I recommend spending a little time thinking about how you could use it to further spread the word of good books. And if you’re not on Pinterest, I highly encourage you to consider it, whether for personal pinning or for the ability to discover a wealth of new things. I think the potential ability for not only bloggers, but authors and publicists, to utilize the service is wide, as well. All it takes is a little time and creativity.

When the book just does it better

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Before I dive in — this post contains spoilers, but they’re pulled out and there is adequate warning beforehand. You won’t have the story or the point ruined if you don’t want it to be!

I think I’ve talked before about my enjoyment of dark things, and it’s probably pretty obvious given the books that really stand out to me tend to go to very dark places. I don’t tend to shy away from horror nor gruesome things, either in print or on screen.

Back in October, I picked up Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black. The writing in this one was deliciously creepy, haunting, and left me with chills. Hill captured atmosphere well in this novel. Atmosphere for me is sort of a nebulous idea — you can’t define it particularly well, but you know it when you read it — and it’s the atmosphere of Hill’s novel that makes it a book you don’t read in the dark (or you do knowing what the consequences will be). I became increasingly invested in this story the more I got to experience the woman in black; she crept into those places that almost made me a little jumpy.

The Woman in Black is a short book, clocking in at about 150 pages, but the story isn’t necessarily easy nor is it cut and dry. It’s a true thriller in that it leaves you with more questions than answers, and Arthur Kipps, the main character, only furthers the reader in asking questions. He doesn’t know what’s going on, and we, as outsiders, know a little more than he does but we can’t even be sure what we’ve figured out is true or simply buying into what other characters have told us. It’s a book you experience, rather than read.

I bought every word of this story until the very end, where I felt let down and disappointed with the resolution. That’s not to say Hill didn’t nail the ending because she does. It’s unsettling. Scary. But as a demanding reader, as one who’d been along for the ride, I didn’t like it. (For those looking for the spoiler-free version, skip the next paragraph).

When I read this, I saw Arthur as the first truly sympathetic character the woman ever had in her life. He’d spent the time to get to the truth of her story, the truth of why she lost her child. He wanted to put them all to rest in the proper way, and he approached this with a sort of respect no one else would give her. Despite how she treated him, he cared enough to make it right. At the end of the book when things look like they’re all right and like Arthur can resume his life as it had been prior to Eel Marsh House, she strikes again, and it’s not pretty. The conclusion, of course, being that no matter what, the woman was going to continue seeking revenge. It didn’t matter what happened or who tried to set it right. Evil won’t rest.

I felt disappointed because I’d become invested in Arthur. I wouldn’t say the ending ruined the book for me because it didn’t, but it made me think a lot about how that particular plot point could play out on the big screen. I’ve watched a fair number of horror movies, and this particular book struck me as one that might translate scenes like the last one better. Enhance them, even.

This weekend, I went and saw Daniel Radcliffe play the role of Arthur Kipp in Hill’s novel. I wanted to settle this battle with myself.

As a movie, I think this did a pretty good job. I haven’t seen the original film production — something on my to-do list if I can track it down — but I have to say, I was impressed enough. Radcliffe delivered in his role as Kipp, and I thought Eel Marsh House was rendered quite true to the story. This isn’t a gore-filled horror movie, and a lot of what made the audience jump came through what I thought were fairly cheap shots. They were effective, but they didn’t do much for me as a viewer who’d read the book. I think this is the kind of movie perfect for those who want to like scary movies but don’t. It might induce a nightmare or two, but it’s not going to psychologically ruin anyone who sees it.

I found myself paying much more attention to the atmospheric elements I’d been drawn to in the book; I didn’t find them quite there, but they were there enough. Seeing the woman in black was much less eerie than reading about her, and picturing how Eel Marsh House looked in my mind left me with more chills than actually seeing it on screen. Words, I think, are more powerful and frightening for me because they put the story right into my imagination, and I have to pull from my own experiences and ideas to depict these things. That is sometimes where true darkness lies. Having someone else’s image on screen depicting something counter to what I’ve envisioned can sometimes be a let down. So for me, there was much less impact visually than there has been upon reading Hill’s story on paper.

But the real let down for me, and the thing that left me wanting to write about this, was the change in the ending. As before, the next paragraph is spoiler, so skip it if you don’t want to know.

The film’s ending is more abrupt than the book’s. In the book, Arthur gets the opportunity to travel back to London and resume his life pre–Eel Marsh House. Things look like they’re resolved and like peace has been achieved, but then the woman strikes again. In the movie, though, Arthur never gets the chance to go home. Instead, when he gets to the train depot for his trip home, he sees the woman at the station and his son marches toward the oncoming train. Arthur dashes to the train to save his son, and in the process both he and his son die. It’s not entirely different in terms of what the resolution says, of course. The message being that the woman won’t rest. But — and this is a big but — in the film, Arthur is reunited with his deceased wife after the impact. She is, of course, representative of the angelic, of peace, of everything being okay. The ending here is ultimately redemptive. Even though the woman in black gets her revenge, it doesn’t matter because Arthur’s back with his dead wife and with his son. They’re going to a better afterlife. So the woman, as much as she thinks she’s in power here, isn’t in power. Instead, it’s Arthur’s wife.

I left the theater frustrated and maybe even a little bit angry. I wanted the ending to tell me more about what I couldn’t get from the book, but instead, I got something entirely different. Something that felt polished and clean. Of course, it made the story much more appealing to a broad audience. That’s not to say that in and of itself is problematic, but I felt myself thinking about the book.

It’s been months since I read Hill’s book, but I’ve considered rereading it. I think I liked it much more upon seeing how the story played out on screen. I think I’ve bought the ending a lot more, and I think I appreciated it on a whole new level after seeing how it was skewed on film. While these cinematic choices fall upon film makers and producers to tell the story how they see it, it wasn’t the story I read. It wasn’t the story I wanted to see on screen, either. I never expect a perfect adaptation on screen.

Walking away from a sanitized film version made me like the book on a new level — one I didn’t consider beforehand. The appeal on the film is much higher than the book itself, but that almost makes the book more for me. Knowing it doesn’t pull a punch at the end makes me appreciate it that much more. It’s darker, it’s scarier. It’s more haunting. I think it comes back to the fact I rely on my own dark places to put together the meaning, and the places where I can go are much darker, much less settled.

And thinking about it, I love the ending of Hill’s book. It was spot on. It was right. It was atmospheric.

I’m not a big book-to-film watcher, and I think this might be one of the first times I walked away from watching a book put on screen where I felt the book was cheated by the film. Reading is an intensely personal activity, and even if we talk about it, even if we blog and review the things we’ve read, it’s still a personal experience and what you take away from it comes only from what you bring to it (intellectually or through curiosity). Film, on the other hand, is much more about what the producers bring to you. It’s their interpretation of story. And while you can bring your own to it, it’s never quite the same. You’re sharing in a story with other people on many, many levels.

But I’m curious — are there other books-to-film out there you’ve felt this way about? Or if you’ve seen and read The Woman in Black (or only seen or only read), I’d love to hear your thoughts, too.