Favorite Books of 2014

I was originally going to attempt to fit all the books I read this year into categories, but that got kind of long and boring. So in simple form, here are my top 10 favorite books that I read in 2014. Order is a bit difficult. The top 3 immediately made my all-time favorites list; the next two were added in retrospect and are practically tied for placement. After that choosing books were difficult. Number 10 was very difficult to decide because I had run out of books that had completely stood out in my memory.

1. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
2. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury
3. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak (technically started in 2013)
4. Everybody Sees the Ants by A.S. King
5. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
6. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
7. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáen
8. Cinder by Marissa Meyer 
9. Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King 
10. Le Petit Prince d'Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (in French)

NEW YEAR THINGS
In the new year, I'm probably going to be reading more classics that are difficult to review because there isn't much new to say about them. I probably only will make a post if I feel like I really have something to say or it means a lot to me. However, I still plan to intersperse light reads in between to keep me from burning out, and I'll hopefully catch up with some other ideas I've had instead of reviews.

Other than that, here is what will hopefully get done in the New Year on this book blog (TV stuff will be mainly on tumblr):

• I'll finish my analysis of Obsidian (on whether it is a good critique of Twilight), I promise.
• I want to catch up/finish The Lunar Chronicles, because that was the one YA series I found entertaining and interesting. (I probably won't read Fairest though.)
• I'm really excited for A.S. King's 2015 release, I Crawl Through It, which is her usual surrealism (but possibly more surreal?) about kids trying to escape from standardized tests. I also want to read Reality Boy, but I'm on the fence about Glory O'Brien.
• I might try out some writing advice, or at least musings on writing.
• I do have some things to say about ways to interpret and our personal experiences in regards to stories, including television, and that will probably appear here as well.
• THE BIG ONE: I planned to run a series of posts about the most influential books in my life and how they shaped my reading and writing habits. I've got the first of these written and would love to work on them and run them weekly at some point in 2015.
• Also, I want to do retrospective reviews of books I love and why I love them. I had started rereading The Things They Carried, actually...

Three Contemporaries: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry; Ask the Passengers; Please Ignore Vera Dietz

I had these all written out and ready to edit and post but then, Blogger deleted it. Or I did by mistake somewhere. I have no idea, but it disappeared, so I have rewritten and pieced back together all of these reviews. I'm very frustrated because I liked the originals, and of course you have no idea what the first draft was like, but I really wanted to share these books so I went through with the rewriting. All three of these I read in a week for the purpose that they could decrease my stress level because they were quick (though I wouldn't call them all "light"), and they worked. I definitely recommend them.

Update: I found the old reviews; I had simply just changed the title and saved it that way and thus didn't recognize it. Oh well. I guess it doesn't matter now.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

This is a 2014 release, and while I've tended to prefer to "catch up" with the literary world (both canon and popular) lately, this seemed like a quick and fun read and like the others in this post, I couldn't wait so I checked it out from the library. While Zevin has written books in the middle grade and young adult markets before, this one is an adult book. However, it's short and fairly simple and there aren't too many words on a page. Aside from some cursing and sexual references, I wouldn't call this too adult in nature. (I measure all adult books by American Gods now, for the record.) It's more like a "universal" book, which is perfectly fine with me.

It's also a book tailored for book lovers. The titular Fikry owns a bookstore and is very particular about what he reads. Many references to real books are slipped in, often with tongue in cheek, so that may or may not be for you. The plot is one of life, as it takes its time to unfold over many years on a small fictional New England island. A.J. Fikry has recently lost his wife when it begins and he looses a very rare Edgar Allen Poe book that would have been his fortune when he retired. Then he finds a toddler named Maya who had been left in his store with a note from her mother who then committed suicide, and he elects to raise her despite knowing nothing about kids. The banter between them was charming and hilarious. As she grows up, Maya, the local police chief, Fikry's sister-in-law, her husband, and a young salesman from a publishing company all have roles to play in softening Fikry to where he will stock works that may not be particularly literary in his store, among other things.

Overall I found the characters to be understandable and I also appreciate how Zevin slipped in diversity; Fikry is part Indian and Maya is black, and while this does inform and influence their characters, it isn't a substitute for character traits. I also liked how everything came together at the end...it may not be a plot-driven novel, but it was woven together nicely.

Ask the Passengers by A.S. King

Everybody Sees the Ants was one of my favorite books from earlier in the year, so I was really looking forward to picking up more from A.S. King.  This one follows Astrid, a girl who lives in a very traditional small town that also functions as a rumor mill. She is questioning her sexuality amongst the negative attitude toward gay people from members of the community and the pressures her lesbian best friend and girlfriend instill on her to just "come out" already. Astrid doesn't want to be put in a box--and that's a powerful theme I believe can apply to all socially constructed or otherwise labels, not only sexuality. The arc of the novel may be straightforward, but it's Astrid's inward questioning over what coming out really means that makes it more nuanced.

Ask the Passengers, which came out the year after Everybody Sees the Ants, is written in a similar style and format. As such, reading it for me meant I was always comparing it to the latter, which I overall enjoyed more, even if I think this one was still pretty good. Astrid, sends her love away to passengers on planes that pass overhead. There were snippets of the stories of the random passengers that received her love which, although thematically relevant, never gelled as well for me as the dream sequences in Everybody Sees the Ants. However, I did enjoy the imagined and often humorous Frank Socrates as much as the ants. I also think that Everybody Sees the Ants has a more nuanced portrayal of love because Lucky is self-aware as to the differences between "movie star love" and real love; although it's a bigger part of the novel, I was never quite sure why Astrid decided she loved Dee so much. I understand how she is attracted and feels comfortable with her (except when she goes to far), and they have some cute moments, but what's their deeper bond? That said, it isn't like the novel makes it seem like they are eternally bound, either, and I also appreciated the frank discussions they had about when they were ready for sex.

While maybe I didn't relate to it as much, Ask the Passengers was good, and I look forward to reading King's other novels even though they may be different. Personally in this one I loved the role the philosophy class played; it was especially fun for me because my dad teaches philosophy, so I got a lot of the jokes and enjoyed sharing them with him. I still love the way King writes complex characters; they often may seem to do ill-informed things, but they still can be relatable. The parents may always come off worse, but hey, it is written through the eyes of a teenager and they still have redeeming qualities. Lastly, I just couldn't stop reading this book...even though the general plot arc is inevitable given the not really original concept, there are plenty of turns along the way that raised the stakes and made it much more interesting. 

Please Ignore Vera Dietz by A.S. King

So naturally I also picked up King's Printz award-winning and breakout novel, Please Ignore Vera Dietz. This one took me a little bit longer to get into. It was formatted a little differently and I could not easily relate to Vera. She was someone who worked a full-time job on top of school and for whom school didn't seem to have as much influence in her life. (Also, I dispute the credibility of a high school offering a Vocab class.) I was under the impression that the story of Charlie and Vera's past was simple and I was not entirely sure the direction the novel was going.

That said, I soon began to get really into it. Aspects of the characters were slowly revealed and it all fell into place. There's a palpable sense of guilt and knowledge of the ups and downs of relationships, between friends and parents. Furthermore, I just love how the characters are very flawed and completely messy. What they do may not be the right thing, but they do have some sense and they're learning.  Another thing I like about King: her characters may be a bit messed up, but they always face consequences from both the authorities and their parents. The same happened in Ask the Passengers. (On the other hand, that one also offered a critique of the school discipline system, because the protagonist did something justified but was still punished.)

The magic realism in Please Ignore Vera Dietz is perhaps more overt than Ask the Passengers and Everybody Sees the Ants.  Vera experiences visions of her dead friend, he narrates a little bit from beyond the grave, and he even helps her in spirit. Speaking of narration shifts, there are also brief sections narrated by Vera's father (complete with flow charts), and the inanimate pagoda which watches over the town also has a few sassy things to say. I really enjoyed this unique structure. As a whole the book felt like a compiled file of what happened to Charlie and how Vera currently as she is trying to figure that out. It's a little bit like the structure of Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me, actually, which is one of my favorite books.

I realize I've left out a description of a plot, but honestly it's hard to explain. It's a contemporary, but also veers toward a mystery, albeit one where the whodunnit isn't that important in the overall scheme of things. It's about the death of a friend who was once close, yes, and coping with the guilt from that. But it's also about growing up and gaining new responsibilities and using them wisely. It's about the role parents have in their children's lives, whether for good or for bad. It might even be a bit about the impact of alcohol and abuse. What it wasn't was something clear-cut, and I love that.

A Frustrating Update

It appears that Blogger lost a post where I had written reviews of 3 books I recently read. I really, really want to rewrite them, but unfortunately it won't be as soon as I thought. I'm very discouraged at the moment. Ugh.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer: A pleasant surprise

Screw the Obsidian analysis I've barely started and the almost-complete Doctor Who finale write-up I still haven't posted on Tumblr (which may just never go up, at least completed). I'm in the mood to review this while it's still fresh in my mind. (Although admittedly it's been possibly over two weeks because I forgot about this post.)

I bought Cinder quite a while ago when I still had YA optimism, because it was (and still is, go check it out) just $2.99 on Kindle. But by the time I had started reading it, I was getting increasingly frustrated by the age group. The thrill of reading genre series as I had when I was younger was leaving me, as I began to feel in YA they were too similar with elements I just wasn't fond of and I gravitated more toward the underrated contemporary novels when I did read the
I was planning on not reading YA purely for hype, and deleted a few from my to-read list because the synopses had not appealed to me. I was prepared to write for a middle grade market, as I was dissatisfied with this one.

Until now.

Well, I mean, I'm still going to be critical. There are still elements and patterns I'm not fond of that are apparently in the majority of what is published in this age group, and those are also the things I will probably never write. But still, there is hope for a little something different.

Enter: Cinder by Marissa Meyer.

The ironic thing, considering the above, is that this would have been one of the first to go if I was eliminating books I had no natural interest in. Fairytale retellings? Cinderella? I was the strange girl who didn't grow up on Disney princess movies and who isn't too interested in happily-ever-afters. Well, Cinder is actually an unpredictable retelling to an extent, and is only the first stepping stone in a larger series (which is one I want to continue for once!). It probably isn't going to change your life or make you think too much, but it succeeds in the inoffensive entertainment and interesting departments, which is sometimes just as good.

From first glance, this seems like a lot of ideas thrown into a blender. Cinder is a cyborg (not an android, although those exist too) who works as a mechanic and is the ward of a wealthy family containing her step-mother Adri and step-sisters Pearl and Peony; they live in New Beijing, a futuristic Beijing after the Fourth World War in which there was a lot of destruction that caused the world to join together and form about five nations, this being the Eastern Commonwealth; there is a deadly plague running rampant and oh, there are also these Lunars who are oppressive brainwashing aliens who have an eye on a political foothold...you get the idea. But, for the most part, this felt well put-together and original instead of tossing several ideas in a blender.

First off, I'll air my few criticisms.I believe the worldbuilding comes off a little short in regards to the other aspects. Cinder takes place in a futuristic China, which is great--YA dystopias are overwhelmingly USA-exclusive--but there isn't a whole lot of Asian influence. I believe others have covered this better than I ever could (check this out), but mostly there were a few simple names, the mention of pagodas or a Buddha statue, and the fact that the ruler is called "emporer" (which made me think of how my world history teacher believed the dyanastic cycle in China would come back as it has throughout history). That's it. We get to learn how the world became more united through the war, but what happened to the culture?

Furthermore, I was initially a bit confused over how human and how robot Cinder is. At first I imagined her as a complete android like Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, so phrases like "her heart winced" were jarring. Eventually I remembered what a cyborg actually was (how silly of me), although it is a bit disappointing that she mostly behaves as a human. Also, I guessed the plot twist very early on (and some of the other twists in advance), which didn't hinder my enjoyment of the book because I did have a good time with it, but it did make the ending feel a bit anticlimactic. Still, I am looking forward to continuing this series, which I hear only gets better.

Onto the good things, then. Despite the aforementioned predictability which had to do with a different aspect, Cinder does not adhere too firmly to the fairy tale. Her robotic foot is an important symbol but it doesn't have the same plot significance (unless I missed something?). There isn't a Fairy Godmother, and other elements are cleverly changed or thinly incorporated. Most refreshingly, one of the step-sisters is nice, and the other step-sister and the step-mother have motivations to be grouchy. The romance is also not as prominent and both characters are fully established as people with their own stories, and it takes on a slow build that made me so happy exists in a YA book. And I'm not going to spoil, but there were a few twists that made it even better.

I don't think I'll get to the rest of the series until the new year, but I am looking forward to it. Cinder wasn't perfect and it wasn't significant, but it was fun, and that was the genre I needed at the time and it's still a genre that has legs.

What I've Been Reading #1

I decided to stop doing wrap-ups strictly by month because that was preventing me for reading how I wanted to. That said, nearly all of these books I began in October.

1. The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury: This is actually a collection of disconnected stories, which I wouldn't have thought would have appealed to me, but I'm so glad I read it! I liked it more than The Martian Chronicles and it's about on par with Fahrenheit 451 for me. There were two stories in a row that made me cry; I love how there is something hopeful about Bradbury's work, but the endings are never quite happy. I immediately added this to my favorites list, and I think it will stay there! 5/5 stars.

2. Obsidian by Jennifer L. Armentrout: I read this because I got the Kindle ebook for free and it was supposed to be a commentary or deconstruction on Twilight. I'm currently stalled on writing an analysis of it with that angle, where I will talk about in more in depth. I do believe that is the best way to enjoy it; while it was clever at times, the love/hate relationship got quite repetitive, and it isn't anything spectacular. 3/5 stars.

3. Stardust by Neil Gaiman: I don't really have a good gauge for a rating on this one so I'm not going to give it a star number (I gave it 4 on Goodreads, but it might be 3.5, but it's not the same 3.5 as others...). I didn't really have any problems with it, although I fell into the bad habit of not focusing enough when the narrative focused on another character than the protagonists. I thought it was lovely and I loved the sort-of-twist at the end. It was cute. I've started the movie too and enjoyed it so far...but they gave away the twist already!

4. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley: I loved the satiric tone and the concepts, but then it became a bit baffling. I've since came up with a good analysis as to why many of the characters did not change, and I've come up with a great thematic theory that explains the ending. But overall it's a case of liking it in theory, but the actual reading experience did not have as strong of an impact. Still though, that beginning... 4/5 stars.

5. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: I could have done without the really long chapter full of historical details of what he was stealing, but overall I really enjoyed this. I loved the atmosphere and the twists, and Dorian's inevitable but still shocking decent to madness. I definitely recommend. Still, it's not my absolute favorite (yet),. 4.5/5 stars.

6. The Golden Apples of the Sun/R is for Rocket by Ray Bradbury: The edition I read was not exactly the same as you can find separately in stores, as it was in an omnibus so it removed stories that had been in The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man and added five more in their place. I enjoyed it for the most part, but the stories were much smaller so I didn't get as attached to them. There were some good ones, but I didn't feel a sense of continuity. 3/5 stars.

7. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini: I loved the first 100 pages or so, but after that I seemed to be distanced from it. It just didn't move me as much as it did some others; I felt a little bit manipulated, actually...especially with his ease at becoming a published author. Also, he was practically an outsider in Afghanistan the whole time (especially later, where you may even call him an American tourist), which felt was a bit convenient for marketing to and hooking American readers. I don't mind the foreshadowing or the plot convenience, but there was something between me and the novel. Maybe it's just the hype. 4/5 stars.

And here is what my TBR looks like!

• Currently I'm in the middle of Cinder by Marissa Meyer, because it's about time I did some YA to review, and I won't spoil it but I'm really enjoying it! Maybe I won't give up on that market quite yet.
• I just bought Frankenstein and Jane Eyre.
• I still have The Da Vinci Code, and in ebook format I have The Warrior Heir, Throne of Glass, and The Darkest Minds, which I will get to eventually for review.
• I also plan on getting to Around the World in 80 Days and Great Expectations by the end of next year!
• Otherwise, I am patiently awaiting Christmas gifts.

I Must Be Cynical: My Fair Share of the Sun

I saw a play last night. It was a school production, and unusual in the fact that it was only one act. It was even more unusual in that there was no singular lead, backdrop, or specially-made costumes. For the most part it consisted of fourteen students sitting in chairs or on ladders wearing a black t-shirt and jeans, seven across from the other seven. It was called My Fair Share of the Sun, a very new play. And it was amazing...until the very end.

The summary, from this:

Uncle Fy and his niece Zoe plant 14 white birches along the lonely dirt road to his cabin in the woods. Shortly thereafter, a violent storm destroys the house and uproots the elder trees, who were the beloved caretakers of these 14, leaving them to fend for themselves. Despite the best efforts of a few of the trees, the group splits into two rival groups, each living on opposite sides of the road, as they race to grow to the sky and crowd each other out in an insatiable hunger for sunlight. They descend into chaos and treachery but, in a momentous climax, achieve an ironic peace—chained to the tiny society that defines their entire world, trying to decide who owns the sun. This is a symbolist play about us—all of us—and our struggle to be the social creatures we all know we have to be in order to live together on both sides of the road.

It sounds so cheesy. And the beginning was, and the ending was. But the middle? It was brilliant. There was childish bickering as they tried to figure out what they meant in this world and understand each other. There was the beginning of rivalry, and the descent into greed and madness. Whole scenes were comprised of shouting and screaming in terror. The fear of dying and the desire to die and get it over with. They turned against each other, sometimes very brutally. A few took control and bullied the others into following along to throw rocks at the rivals. A couple tried to strangle squirrels. And near the very end, it looks like even the good ones on the dominating side are going down the wrong path.

Except...the ending.

Up until the ending, it appeared that they a few trees were going to systematically destroy the others in an endless struggle. They would make more and more enemies with each other. It was like Lord of the Flies with trees.  Their bond was going to be their downfall. It was so beautiful and dark. This was a five-star play for me. But then...the ending.

See, the dominant faction of trees, at the request of what appeared to be one of its good members, joins branches in the middle of frigid weather that was in danger of killing them. The apparently good tree assures the others that they're not going to fall backward, which terrifies the trees across from them, because it looks like they will fall on top of the others and kill them all. The lights go out. There are screams and cracking sound effects.

But they didn't all die. They became intertwined, some of them even switching sides of the roads. And I mean, I suppose that is ironic. But it was just a little bit thematically inconsistent with what came before for my tastes. And I think I really wanted more of the terrifying decent into darkness.

This accentuated something about myself. I spent most of my time yesterday figuring out what I really wanted to write in terms of age range, and how dark was acceptable. I just really love unhappy endings, especially when they say something about ourselves.

A Departure

I've been musing a lot today on genre and what I want to read and write. There are some directions this blog will turn.

1. Yet more thoughts on the landscape of the current market of literature, especially that for children and teens, as I wonder what the heck I really want to write and how to go about it. (This was so much easier when I didn't worry about where in the bookstore my writing might be found someday...)

2. Continued analysis of current books to see if there really is so much sameness that I feel is stifling me. 

3. My thoughts on a very obscure play I saw that sort of exemplifies what I want to see from stories, and how this may not actually be considered compatible with the age range I want to write for.