Shelter

Yipes! To my whole week, yipes! My house was broken into this week and my computer was stolen. The cats and I are fine and the burglar(s) was very considerate with very little taken and very little damage. Then my boss took me out for a belated birthday lunch and I got food poisoning. Does that seem like a kind thing to have happened? I’m watching over my shoulder for the 3rd thing to hit and hoping it’s gentle.

In the not gentle category, I got around to the second book in the Chaos Walking series, The Ask and the Answer. I complained about the cliffhanger ending for the first book, but Ness earned it in this one. By the time I finally started it, the book was due back to the library in a couple of days, so I thought I’d start it and see if it was worth renewing. I think I finished it in a few straight hours and would have loved to have the third, Monsters of Men, on hand to keep reading.

If you’ve forgotten the first one, The Knife of Never Letting Go Todd lives in a place where there are no women and everyone’s thoughts are audible. He’s the only boy left who hasn’t gone through a ritual to become a man and his guardians are determined to get him out of the village before that day comes. He meets a girl in the forest, a survivor from a spaceship sent to scout the area for colonization, and they set off together to save both of their lives. They’re trying to reach a town that might not even be real, but it’s their only hope of safety.

Todd (who still speaks phonetically and that still bugs me, but much less this round) and Viola are prisoners of the place they hoped would be safe haven. Todd is held in a bell tower by the Mayor of his former hometown, who wants him to join in the new regime. Viola is across town in a healer house, with no way to contact Todd or the ships bringing more of her people to the area. Forced into opposite sides of the battle for control, they never lose their connection to each other, even when their faith is shaken. The world of The Ask and The Answer is in constant flux, where allies and enemies aren’t and nobody can be completely trusted. Everyone has an agenda, including Todd and Viola, and the only way to win is to risk everything.

That last part sounded so much like the back blurb for a romance novel that I made myself laugh. I’ve noticed that when I like a book, I turn all earnest reviewer. “You simply must read it, Edith. It’s a thrill-a-minute joy-ride with real-world consequences.” So go to it, Edith. Start reading.

Lone Star State of Mind

I read a book this week about a girl moving to Texas from New York, but it was utterly forgettable, so I’m going to introduce you to the New Yorker- transplants-to-Texas book that remains the gold standard. I think I read Never Love a Cowboy in middle school, but I buy every copy I come across in used book stores and pass them out to friends. The author went on to write two more Sweet Dreams books, but then apparently went out of the book writing business. I like to think it’s because she finally visited Texas and died of shame.

Bear in mind that this book is set in Austin. In the 1980’s. Austin has always been a different part of Texas, less Western stereotypical than any other city, but our author likes to imagine a slightly different Austin. Bitsy moves from New York (really Brooklyn, but I’m thinking Ms. DuKore perhaps has never visited there, either, since she seems to imply that it’s downtown Manhattan) to Austin, Texas. She’s walking to school on her first day, down the street that leads directly to the University of Texas campus, and she hears a boy on a horse behind her on the street. A boy on a horse in the middle of the street near the U.T. campus, now. His name is Billy Joe Bridges (of course it is) and he’s dating teen queen Betty Lou Bender (of course he is). He knows that Bitsy is from New York and transferring to their school, as does everyone else at the high school. The hundreds of students are all waiting impatiently to catch a glimpse of the girl from the city.

They get their chance to see her up close and personal during lunch where they serve grits and black-eyed peas and collard greens, leading to the immortal line “Bitsy munched on a collard green and pondered her next move.” Yes, and then after school they ride the horse to the nearby drive-thru where they eat chiliburgers and tacoburgers. I’m going to just stop italicizing for emphasis, because it would be a stream of italics from here to the local tacoburger stand. There’s a rodeo, and all the music available is country-western, and Bitsy (who sang with a “punk-rock” band in New York, adding to the concepts our author has only heard about third-hand), sings a song, leading the bar owner (a Mr. Gonzales, so it’s totally not racist) to worry that the other patrons would riot at the idea of a cute girl “like Bitsy singing about her Latino boyfriend.” The song was called (wait for it), “Where’s My Tex-Mex Sweetheart?”

This may be the best book ever written about Texas. My dad collects Texana, and I’ve tried to get him to add it to his collection several times, but he just doesn’t recognize genius. I always wanted to invite the author to Austin when I lived there, meet her at the airport with a horse and watch her try and cross I 35 in search of a drive-thru grits stand.  I’m down to one copy, but keep your eyes peeled for this one in the used book stores – it’s worth every penny.

Stand

You guys, I know it’s a book about teenagers with cancer. I want you to read it anyway. It’s not sappy. It’s biting and funny and sarcastic and real in a way I don’t think I’ve read before, certainly not in Young Adult and absolutely not when referring to kids with deadly diseases. John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars is simply outstanding.

I had high hopes for this one, loving Paper Towns and An Abundance of Katherines as much as I did, but I was surprised at how good it was. I didn’t see myself in the characters at all, Hazel, Augustus, and Isaac are braver and more honest than I think I would ever be, but I did love them. Prickly Hazel, determined not to get close to people and cause them more pain when she’s gone. Augustus, charismatic and and thoughtful, but not a paper saint. And Isaac, their witness, who should have been a supporting character, but who felt so much more important than that.

Hazel’s favorite book (and a major plot point) ends in the middle of a sentence. Hazel tells herself that she’s come to terms with the book just stopping, to represent the end of the narrator's viewpoint, but she’s obsessed with knowing the postscript. She wants to know what happens to the other characters in the story. Hazel is convinced that the author has imagined their future, refusing the concept that characters cease to exist when a story end. I’m a big believer that characters live past their creation and enough authors like Larry McMurtry have talked about past characters coming back to haunt them until they finished the story that I would place bets that John Green knows exactly what happens to each of his creations.

I said I don’t see myself in these characters, but there’s an early passage that is completely me. Augustus is driving Hazel for the first time and he hits the gas too hard and brakes too suddenly. He tells her the story of his driving test.

Sorry. I swear to God I am trying to be gentle. Right, so anyway at the end of the test, I totally thought I’d failed again, but the instructor was like, “Your driving is unpleasant, but it isn’t technically unsafe.”

I think I’ve heard that before.