Grave Mercy

part of me hopes that "Robin LaFevers" isn't a pen name, because it's pretty awesome. 

I blasted through Robin LaFevers' Grave Mercy in 2 afternoons. It was one of those books that dances on the edge of being really silly or unbelievable, and toes the line of cheesy young lady romance books. Don't hate, but I love that sort of thing. I love that the heroine is obsessed with killing everybody, but only if her Saint commands it. I love that she hates the hero and keeps hoping for an excuse to kill him, until the inevitably end up making out, because duh, why else have they been thrown together? When I haven't got anything better to do with my mind or my imagination, I live for that cheap thrill, that tension of two prickly and likable characters trapped in a situation that forces them to work together and then make out. Typing that makes me laugh, but it's true.

I love that it takes place in the Brittany region of France, where the story of Saints and mysterious convents with magical powers and poisons is just believable enough in a medieval setting. Let's face it, that sort of "Gallic/Roman religious & political conflict starring a young woman with magical powers" story has been done to death, but when you remove everything to France, you can at least breathe one last gasp of interesting breath into it. And people get to swear in French all the time, which is fun.

This was a refreshing book because it was a reminder of how I felt devouring books as a child -- understanding that they were not high literature, but enjoying them just the same. Knowing that it would be all over in an afternoon, but racing along for my own satisfaction.

Fangirl

by Rainbow Rowell

You may be thinking to yourself, didn't we just talk about Rainbow Rowell?

Yes, gentle reader, yes we did.

Rainbow Rowell is fast becoming one of my favorite authors.

Rainbow Rowell gets it, gentle reader. She really captures what it is like to be young, or younger, or perhaps just a human at all. I'm trying very hard here to distance myself from the fact that I identified very personally and strongly with Cath, the the heroine, and focus on how realistic the dialogue and situations were. There was a scene in particular where Cath meets a girl in the library, and it turns out that the girl is reading her fanfiction online, and they have a geeky little laugh over fanfiction and how much they enjoy it. There is nothing particularly deep or plot-moving in the scene, but it so perfectly captured the quiet, honest, geeky moments of joy and instant camaraderie that form when two nerds meet.

The cover art is by Noelle Stevenson, who is a prolific artist on tumblr, often posting fan doodles of geeky fandoms such as Lord of the Rings and The Avengers. Her art is, I feel, a perfect choice. Additionally, the layout of the "Encyclowikia" page, and the online fanfiction pages within the novel leant a sort of credibility and realness to the experience of reading Cath's story. Although the novel was not written in a diary format, I felt as though I was reading someone's blog, with links to fanfiction pages as they were relevant to the blog entries. It's a style that is really appealing and easy to digest.

Cath is absolutely one of my favorite characters so far, battling for position number one with Siobhan from The Story of Owen. Both of these characters are strong and focused on their passions, dedicating themselves to their crafts while cultivating relationships with people around them. They stay absolutely true to themselves. In fact, the one criticism I have of Fangirl is that the romance was absolutely unnecessary. It was executed well, but it didn't add anything to Cath. Cath was just as interesting on her own. She was just as successful on her own. It did, however, make me smile to see her beau, Levi, taking such an interest in her passions. I loved how he would tell her to go write, how he would leave her time to write, how much he valued her happiness and her spirit.

Fangirl reminded me of being young and in college, of feeling optimistic and in love and ready to write and create. I think for a younger reader, they might have those feelings too, even if they are still in college or high school. That youthful passion doesn't have to be a memory at that point.



On a personal, reflective note, these are two places I marked in the book, where I had to set it down for a bit.

1. "I don't just kiss people. Kisses aren't.... just with me. That's why I've been avoiding you. That's why I'd like to avoid you now." (p 223)

2. "I don't trust anybody. Not anybody. And the more I care about someone, the more sure I am they're going to get tired of me and take off."
Levi's face clouded over. Not grimly, she thought -- thoughtfully. In thoughtful clouds.
"That's crazy," he said.
"I know," Cath agreed, feeling almost relieved. "Exactly. I'm crazy." (p 281)

Fangirl  is definitely on my list of books to buy in September!

Grasshopper Jungle

There is no image for this book, because I am too sick to bother to take one.

by Andrew Smith

Grasshopper Jungle made me horny.

No, wait. It didn't do that. It did the opposite of that. 

Grasshopper Jungle is a really difficult book to read when you're sick in bed, largely because of the grotesque imagery and the giant bugs and the terribly sad descriptions of small-town Iowa. Not the quaint small towns that are inhabited by old people. Picture a dying strip mall from some realist film that was gunning for a hipster Oscar. There. That's the sad small-town I'm talking about. Lots of piss and grime.

It's a difficult read when you're sick in bed because, aside from the bits where I had to slog through everyone's cigarette butts, this book made me really excited. I read it at rapid-fire pace, because I had to, I had to know what was coming next, and what the deal was with the bugs, and who was going to get eaten, and when the characters were going to put the pieces together. I had to shoot through all the extraneous "historical" details presented by the main character. I wanted the meat, dang it, just like a giant hungry mantis wants to tear off your mandible and eat it. 

Grasshopper Jungle kept up an excellent pace, with just enough little hints and sideways deviations from the plot to frustrate me, but not so many that I got annoyed and stopped reading. I actually quite enjoyed that the main character, Austin, was such a historian, but without over-thinking his compulsion to record events, or being particularly nerdy about it. 

The pace was a good metaphor for teenage sexuality, really, especially for Austin. All these things are dangled out in front of him, making him inexplicably horny, forcing him to act. It's not that he wants to have sex with everything, just that he has no real outlet for his various emotions, other than to keep ploughing forward while looking ever-backward on this super-creepy giant-bug adventure that descends on him. That's how we, as humans, try and sort out all the crazy stuff that is happening to us, either internally, or externally. To continue my developing pattern of only being able to explain characters by relating them to other characters, Austin is much like Paul Atreides from Frank Herbert's Dune, the way he talks about seeing all the lines and clues and key events cross his desk as he writes his histories. Austin says that the why of everything is not his concern, only the what. But I think he was searching for what next? in his own personal life by examining all those clues and converging pieces of history.