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Thursday Reading Post
12/9/13 13:36Recently Finished:
If You Could Be Mine, Sara Farizan. Sweet, sad story of an Iranian girl who panics when the girl she's in love with gets engaged to somebody else. The author is Iranian-American, and doesn't fall into the typical thing of depicting Iran as an oppressive dystopian monolith; the narrator has a cosmopolitan gay bad-boy cousin, and befriends a young trans woman. Sometimes the exposition about Iranian culture feels a little forced, but it works as a story of doomed love (not-exactly-spoiler alert!) and coming of age.
Bruised, Sarah Skilton. Recent Tae Kwon Do black belt Imogen experiences PTSD following a hold-up at a diner, in which a gunman is killed; she feels guilt and helplessness about her inability to stop the hold-up or the gunman's death. I had some issues with this around food and fitness and disability, predictably.
Wild Awake, Hilary T. Smith. Kiri is an aspiring musician left to fend for herself while her parents are off on a cruise; her life is thrown into disarray after she gets a call from a friend of her sister, dead some five years ago from an "accident." In a few short weeks she discovers the truth about her sister's death, falls in love with a troubled bicycle mechanic, and starts experiencing a manic episode. Of course, I spent the last half of the book thinking "Oh no, oh no, please don't do that, please don't do that." I have read a lot of YA books dealing with mental illness this year, and I think this is one of the best -- there's a sense of both Kiri and Skunk as real, vulnerable human beings who get their brains knocked off kilter a bit and who are trying their best to cope. The sections that are manic are appropriately exhilarating and terrifying.
Gloating bookspoils:
More Than This, Patrick Ness; Picture Me Gone, Meg Rosoff; Sorrow's Knot, Erin Bow.
If You Could Be Mine, Sara Farizan. Sweet, sad story of an Iranian girl who panics when the girl she's in love with gets engaged to somebody else. The author is Iranian-American, and doesn't fall into the typical thing of depicting Iran as an oppressive dystopian monolith; the narrator has a cosmopolitan gay bad-boy cousin, and befriends a young trans woman. Sometimes the exposition about Iranian culture feels a little forced, but it works as a story of doomed love (not-exactly-spoiler alert!) and coming of age.
Bruised, Sarah Skilton. Recent Tae Kwon Do black belt Imogen experiences PTSD following a hold-up at a diner, in which a gunman is killed; she feels guilt and helplessness about her inability to stop the hold-up or the gunman's death. I had some issues with this around food and fitness and disability, predictably.
Wild Awake, Hilary T. Smith. Kiri is an aspiring musician left to fend for herself while her parents are off on a cruise; her life is thrown into disarray after she gets a call from a friend of her sister, dead some five years ago from an "accident." In a few short weeks she discovers the truth about her sister's death, falls in love with a troubled bicycle mechanic, and starts experiencing a manic episode. Of course, I spent the last half of the book thinking "Oh no, oh no, please don't do that, please don't do that." I have read a lot of YA books dealing with mental illness this year, and I think this is one of the best -- there's a sense of both Kiri and Skunk as real, vulnerable human beings who get their brains knocked off kilter a bit and who are trying their best to cope. The sections that are manic are appropriately exhilarating and terrifying.
Gloating bookspoils:
More Than This, Patrick Ness; Picture Me Gone, Meg Rosoff; Sorrow's Knot, Erin Bow.