avengingsybil

Wintergirls in the Spring

I couldn't help it, I read Wintergirls in one sitting. I started and I just couldn't stop. So I didn't. I confess I haven't read much Laurie Halse Anderson other than Speak but I need to correct this fact immediately. What was I just saying about the pleasure of having an author's catalog at my disposal, no waiting? Lucky, greedy me.

Back to Wintergirls, which was astounding. It knocked me over with its authenticity, its humanity, and its powerful voice. Anderson entirely resists making this a book about eating disorders, a lesson book or a cautionary tale. It's the story of Lia, a girl who struggles with demons. Getting inside her head is scary but irresistible. All I could do was hope and root for her throughout the book. In that way, and in the disturbing depths of her private pain, it reminds me of Elizabeth Scott's Living Dead Girl. Only the reader knows how just much danger Lia, like Alice from LDG, is in, and as hard as it gets, we can't leave them to their desperation. It's a grueling ride, but it's worth it.

I have a lot more to say but I'm going to save it for my book club discussion. I will say though that lately I've noticed the way parents are portrayed in young adult literature a lot more, and Wintergirls is no exception. Did parents always get these kind of integrated storylines in YA, or is it because I'm getting older myself that they stand out more to me? All I know is that I really appreciate the representation of parents as messy, conflicted, occasionally not-that-great people. I think it gives teenage readers a lot of credit and assumes that they don't need to be hammered over the head with the idea that parents always care or know what's best.

Beautiful, haunting book. Great job, LHA.

Currently reading: My Most Excellent Year: A Novel of Love, Mary Poppins, & Fenway Park by Steve Kluger

Written material copyright 2009 Dawn A. Emerman

Please Think of the Children!

If ever a book was crying out for the avengingsybil treatment, it's Castration Celebration by Jake Wizner. I hadn't heard of it at all until I read Siobhan Vivian's spot-on response to the New York Post review of the book at The Longstockings. Something tells me I will probably find the book mighty bothersome, but not in the way that the Post reporter (now everyone's a literary critic?) does. It seems to me that what Amanda Peyser has done will actually serve to get the book more publicity than any other type of review might. Could that be what was intended all along?

In any case, like Ms. Vivian, I will let my own reading of the book inform my review, for better or for worse, and until then I will do my best to reserve judgment. Since when has the Post concerned themselves with literary quality in the first place? I'm not trying to be snobby about this, as everyone's entitled to their opinions, but this seems a bit more pointed, like an example of the Post doing what it does best: sensationalizing and stirring up a storm of lascivious panic.

Anyway. I'm still on my nostalgic reading kick, and today I want nothing more than to get out in the beautiful weather and read the Weetzie Bat series as well as Girl Goddess #9, especially the story about the teenager who runs off to San Francisco and discovers the secret of her parentage. Oh what Amanda Peyser would make of that body of work!

Written material copyright 2009 Dawn A. Emerman

Springing Eternal

I just read this lovely quick post in Publisher's Weekly online about adults increasingly and unapologetically reading YA books,  and it made me think of a few things. One, that it's nice to see an article on the subject that doesn't bash or condescend to YA. Two, that I am one of those greedy readers— I have no qualms about picking up book when most of the series has already been written. Instant gratification is for me! I considered it the luckiest thing that I only boarded the Harry Potter train as the fourth title was being published. Some would say I missed out by not experiencing most of the interminable wait between books, but I think there's something to be said for gorging on a series. Namely that it perfectly suits my obsessive nature.

Finally, the last bit about the elderly woman revisiting I Capture the Castle not only inspired me to read that book (for the first time) but to think about what favorites from my younger days (or even grad school days when there was rarely time to linger and luxuriate) I'd like to revisit.

Off the top of my head, I'd pick up Memo to Myself When I Have a Teenage Kid by Carol Snyder. Am I the only one who loved this book? It's out of print now, but I bet my well-loved copy is kicking around somewhere in my childhood home. It was my comfort book, I used to read it over and over again, especially when I couldn't sleep. For better or worse, I'd love to see how it has aged. I've also been thinking about Maureen Daly's Seventeenth Summer for a long time. I remember reading it in a harried rush in the last days of a semester for my realistic fiction class and at the time it was bursting with Spring outside—as it was in the book, and as it is right now—and I lamented how I had to fly through it, check it off my list on my way to the next assignment, spending the ever-more-beautiful days inside doing homework.

Not being bound to a grad school schedule anymore, now seems just perfect for a do-over. What's on your wayback list?

Written material copyright 2009 Dawn A. Emerman

Best Intentions

The old not-an-excuse-but-an-explanation : I've been sidelined by my annual sinus infection, therefore my productivity has been limited. As my head tends to get swimmy under these conditions, I try to avoid reading. I know that many of you can relate to the feeling that this is akin to torture. Not read? How about not breathe? Well, I wasn't doing much of that anyway. But now antibiotics have been administered and it's a new day, beginning with the arrival of Wintergirls at my library.

I have every intention of picking up with the three-per-week output goal I've set for myself, and at this stage I mean to continue that beyond the month of April. So there we are.

Written material copyright 2009 Dawn A. Emerman

Dickensian

Most of the time I think it's true that the more you use your brain, the more you want to use your brain and therefore the more productive you are. Today, however, my brain disagrees. I've spent many hours using it and now I'm fried to a crisp. Hey, it's Friday and it's nearly 70 degrees for the first time this year in Boston. I think I'm entitled to power down.

Before I head off for a weekend of glorious nothing, I'm wondering if anyone out there's been watching the latest PBS Masterpiece Classic, Little Dorrit. Oh, I am hooked! I've never read the book, but I need to do that pronto, if only to better keep track of the million characters and their interwoven storylines. I somehow managed to avoid Dickens for the most part even throughout my schooling and I feel it's time to catch up. What are your favorites? What's overrated? Underrated? Librarians and teachers, is Dickens still widely taught and read? Even the little tidbits about the author's life that  Laura Linney gives at the beginning of each episode are fascinating. You know who would have worked himself to death in an effort counteract the effects of this economy? That guy.

And so concludes this cerebrally taxing workweek.

Written material copyright 2009 Dawn A. Emerman

Insatiable

Thanks, Debby (and hi!), for weighing in with those food-related titles. I will definitely check them out. As I continue to search for books with food-positive themes, I am reminded of how Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate is one of those titles that seems to have a lot of crossover appeal for young adults and has even been used extensively in high school literature classes. The sensual and emotional aspects of food and cooking form the basis for the entire story, and it's downright erotic in parts. Great book, great film too. I love that it's considered appropriate for teenagers, but I wonder what it is about it that makes it so. I suppose it's a neat introduction to certain types of metaphor and imagery. I wish I had had a chance to discuss it in a classroom setting.

It's funny, I barely remember talking about racy themes in my high school classes and I'm not sure if it was because of the books we read or if it just didn't come up— for several years I participated in an experimental English program that emphasized writing (mostly essays), and class discussions mostly revolved around our craft; we all chose our own reading with the teacher's guidance and mainly discussed it privately with him. Of course, it's been so long I could be misremembering. I do know that it wasn't until grad school that I developed such an interest in representations of sexuality in literature, and that could be because it was something I felt was missing all those years before. And I'm not saying that all food books conjure images of sex, but they often go hand-in-hand. That's a whole thesis unto itself right there.

As I write all this, I have Laurie Halse Anderson's Wintergirls on my library queue and I very much look forward to getting my hands on it. I swear that I won't let my recent pro-chowing-down fixation color my reading. Being such a fan of LHA and her mesmerizing skill, I can all but guarantee that it won't.

Written material copyright 2009 Dawn A. Emerman

The World I Want to Live In

Since upping my blog output, I've also been making the return to my old habit of working on my novel for an hour or so first thing in the morning before getting ready to go to my job. It doesn't always yield much in the way of content, but it's better than no content. Soon I'm hoping that it will be just part of the routine, or at least the getting started part won't feel like a struggle. We'll see.

As for the blogging portion, today it's taken me awhile to get around to saying what I want to say about Perri Klass, MD's thought-provoking article  that appeared in yesterday's New York Times but I'm going to write about it anyway. In the article, Dr. Klass examines people's ideas about speaking to adolescents of either sex about manners, particularly as they apply to sex relations.

I've written in here many times about how much it bothers me that our society seems to take at face value that boys are aggressors and girls are victims who need to be protected from their own urges. Of course there cases where this is a sad truth, but I've always had a big problem with the generality, as well as the notion that all the responsibility of not teasing and/or not being attacked lies with girls. I've also felt that it's really, really not like that, we just need to find a way to combat the spread of that idea. I really liked Dr. Klass's evenhanded approach to this issue. One paragraph really stood out for me:

It’s too bad that one side of teaching our children about sex and relationships means reminding them that there are bad people in the world; stay away from them, stay safe, speak up if someone hurts you or pushes you. But everyone needs that information, and that promise of adult support. We have to get that message across without defining some of our children as obvious perpetrators and others as obvious victims, because that insults everyone.

Here she emphasizes the positive aspects of sex and relationships over the negative, and makes a point of not only applying personal responsibility to both parties, but reminds us that the boys who aren't just lying in wait to date-rape—and these boys are the majority—might just take offense that they'd need to be told not to be assholes and sexual assaulters. The message: talk to your kids, ALL your kids— make sure they respect themselves and others, and most of the time they'll grow up to be healthy teenagers and then adults in every capacity. There are always exceptions, but exceptions are just that. Should it take a medical professional to make this idea viable? Of course not. But if it gets conversations started, then you won't hear any arguments here.

Written material copyright 2009 Dawn A. Emerman

Is Talking About Procrasinating a Form of Procrastination? Discuss.

Much obliged for the book recs! I'm sure one of these will be perfect for my nephew - the hard part will be narrowing down the choices to just one.

I have to say I'm getting the hang of this frequent update thing... who knew a little resolve and discipline was all I needed? OK, fine, my mom. And Jane Yolen of the butt-in-chair philosophy. It's only one week in, though, and I'm finding that the sense of accomplishment I get from making myself update so often, however small or subjective that accomplishment might be, is spilling over into other stalled areas of my life. It feels good to just write something, just do something. It's so simple, and, in theory, once I get started I'm never sorry. But the starting, oh the starting. As a lifelong procrastinator, I am destined to forget that starting is not really so scary. But at least for the month of April I will celebrate going against my teeth-pulling nature.

Speaking of pulling teeth, though I'm not religious, my husband and I observe our respective family traditions and as we celebrated Passover with his, we'll be celebrating Easter with my family this weekend. Mmm, Cadbury Cream Eggs, Reese's Peanut Butter Eggs and all those other sugary paschal treats.

Written material copyright 2009 Dawn A. Emerman

P-p-p-please?

This entry is really just a quick plea to you wonderful book nerds out there. My nephew, who just turned eight, is a lover of both baseball and nonfiction books and for his birthday I bought him You've Never Heard of Sandy Koufax?! by Jonah Winter and Andre Carrilho and the astounding We Are the Ship: the Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson. He loved both books, but it turns out he already had the Nelson one so I'm looking for something to replace it (and oh, so sad, I get to keep it for my own collection).

I'd love to hear any suggestions, as books for younger readers are not really my forte. He loves animals and American History as well as baseball, and of course I'd be open to any of your esteemed recommendations in any genre.

Thanks so much in advance. And Go Sox!

Delicious Reading

Aside from the southern vampire series I can't seem to stop reading even though they are starting to piss me off mightily (more on that in another entry, maybe) I haven't been able to get enough food memoirs. The latest: Ruth Reichl's Comfort Me with Apples, which made me cry even as I drooled at her culinary descriptions, and Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life—which flew by—made me want to be her friend.

I am a great and adventurous eater, but to tell you the truth I'm not much a cook myself. I dabble in baking, but my husband, to my extreme luck, is the real chef in the family. Still, I wonder what it is about this genre of book that endears itself so to me. Certainly the personalities and the skill of the writers I choose to read have a lot to do with it, but there's something about food and its power in one's memories that is appealing in a specific and universal way. Which makes me wonder why it is that so few YA books deal with food in a positive way.

Pleasure in eating seems to be the realm of the very young (I'm aware that there are not just a few studies that connect this to sublimated sexuality) or the very grown-up, but I can't think of many incidences of food in YA books that aren't connected to body image or eating disorders. This isn't to say that they aren't out there— I happen to know there's one out there right now about a teenage foodie that I'm very interested in reading, and another great thing about Down to the Bone is that part of its sensuality encompasses the characters' love of food. But this seems to be more the exception than the rule. I appreciate books such as the Georgia Nicholson series that, if they mention food at all, it's treated as normal sustenance, not something to be demonized. But reading about Molly Wizenberg's passion about food and cooking as a teenager, it reminds me that even though I went through my own small battle with food, despite those tumultuous days of adolescence, I still mainly associated food with happiness, not a source of angst. Of course I am not disparaging books that involve eating disorders, there are many that are haunting and important and beautifully written. And I'm not even getting into the privilege inherent when talking about pleasure eating.

It's just that if I may add one more item to my YA wish list, it's that I'd love to see love of food become the norm. Something to ponder over matzoh balls and brisket this evening. Happy Pesach to all who celebrate.

Written material copyright 2009 Dawn A. Emerman