Speak No Evil

Next week is Banned Books Week, the most wonderful time of the year... to have open discourse about censorship. This year everyone's up in arms about the Speak controversy and well we should be. I'm continually amazed that there are people who not only take it upon themselves to dictate others' reading choices, but to further the idea that being informed is somehow dangerous. I do love to be reminded to appreciate intellectual freedom though, and for better or worse there's no shortage of well-meaning but wrong-headed people to get me re-invigorated for the fight.

Oh snap, I never weighed in on Linger! I... liked it? Yeah. I did. It didn't bowl me over the way Shiver did, but the language is still lovely and I'm jealous that Stiefvater can write prose as well as songs. And she's artistically talented as well. That's just not fair. She gets major points for name checking the Gutter Twins, which is lucky because I had to take a few away in relation to Cole and Isabel's relationship. It was pretty hot, but it irked me that Cole took it upon himself to protect Isabel from her own sexuality. That's a classic sticking point with me. The ending was done well, in an Empire Strikes Back Han-frozen-in-carbonite way. I have no idea how Grace's storyline will be resolved, and I'm definitely looking forward to Forever (not that Forever,  silly, though what better time to revisit that perennially challenged chestnut).

Happy (?) BBW 2010!

Currently reading: Huge by Sasha Paley (here and there); my cousin's astounding manuscript (during my pumping breaks at work); A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book (at night) which is delicious and going by way too fast. Will I finish Little Dorrit before 2011? There have got to be Vegas odds on that by now.

Written material copyright Dawn A. Emerman 2010