Feminist Fun: Alien Tango

Gini Koch's science fiction romances have too much fun to take themselves seriously.  Kitty, the protagonist, probably realized that life was too short to stress the small stuff when she first noticed that her name, Katherine Katt, was a poor pun that her parents would pretend never to notice.  This attitude suited her well in the first book, Touched By an Alien, when Koch delighted in throwing ridiculous twists her way, and Kitty handled them with aplomb.

In the second book, Alien Tango, Kitty continues to enjoy herself on her own terms, which I find a strong and feminist place to be.  She likes her big purse, and can find stuff in it.  She knows some martial arts, but prefers to let the people with superpowers fight it out against the big trucks.  She enjoys great sex, but doesn't expect it to always lead to marriage.  True love is great, but if she's not treated well, she'll walk out.  Emotional cluelessness is not a male preserve, and neither are blinding flashes of brilliance.  And confidence in them.

This was a great book to read on lines at Disneyland, because the tone is light, there is something happening every few pages, and I'm not going to be tempted to share it with my kids (see the "great sex" reference above).  Although there are lots of complications, I didn't have to concentrate hard; it was easy to slide back in whenever I pulled it out of my bag.  And now I will always associate it with Space Mountain.

Reading My Library: Good Batch

I'm continuing my glacial pace through the picture books, with mostly good results this week.  The kids read most of the books with me, and gave everything a thumbs up with various degrees of enthusiasm.

We read:

• Little Black Crow, by Chris Raschka.  Neat water colors and tiny thought poems intrigued us, but I'm not sure how it would work with the tiny toddler set.  Made me wish I had one to try it on.
• Frankenstein Takes the Cake, Adam Rex.  Fourth grade P and I liked the mix of illustrations and poetry, but sixth grade X does not do poetry and felt betrayed by his love of the illustrations.
• Furious George Goes Bananas, by Michael Rex.  A universal favorite from the eight year old on up, this parody of Curious George address most of the questions you ponder, such as what is it with that yellow hat man.
• And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, illustrated by Henry Cole.  This cute story of a foster penguin child in the Bronx Zoo has the shocking twist that the penguin pair raising her are both male.  If this does not shock you, it's a rather quiet book.  The kids thought it was OK but weren't sure why it got banned; one suggestion was the depiction of a penguin birth (you see the egg cracking).
• Sergio Makes a Splash, Edel Rodriguez.  I grabbed this one because I had penguins on my brain, and it was a bit of a mind twist to sink into it, since the penguins are anthropomorphic, very unlike Tango.  But the story of a young penguin dealing with fear of the ocean was cute.
• The Biggest Frog in Australia, by Susan L. Roth.  Although we liked this version of the Tiddalik story and the torn paper illustrations, the refusal to use Tiddalik's name was confusing (it's always "the biggest frog in Australia.").  We prefer the version from PlaySchool that a friend sent us.
• Rain School, James Rumford.  A quiet, cosy and colorful tale of a school year in Chad, from building the school and desk through respectful learning and into the end of the year and the dissolving of the school in the summer rains.  
• Baloney (Henry P.), by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith was the hands-down favorite of my two sons, who loved the tall tale structure, nonsense words, and wild illustrations.  It was a neat aftershock to find that all the nonsense words are Earth words from different languages.
• Tarzan, by Robert D. San Souci, illustrated by Michael McCurdy.  Good retelling of the first part of Burrough's book, with dark but attractive pictures.  The boys enjoyed it but show no signs of heading for the original text.
• Give a Goat, Jan West Schreck, illustrated by Aileen Darragh.  I hoped the book was actually about a goat, but instead it follows a class raising money to donate a goat through Habitat for Humanity.  The watercolor pictures weren't too exciting.

Firefly Comic: Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale

Book, the mysterious preacher on Firefly, retired to a Haven Mining community to die and inspire heroism in the remaining Serenity crew. Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale by Joss and Zack Whedon and Chris Samnee explores his backstory, cascading backwards from his religious avocation to his violent military background to his rough youth. The format worked for me, which I find is not always guaranteed with modern graphic novels, many of which are too raw for my delicate sensibilities.

However, it didn't answer all the dangling questions. I still don't know how Book got medical care from the Alliance when the doc got himself kidnapped by the witch-hunting goofballs. So I'm taking off a grade.  B.

Music For the Deaf: Five Flavors of Dumb

I remembered that Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John had won an award, and after reading this delightful YA novel about the novice manager of a high school rock band I went looking to see which award. I checked the Cybils (blogger awards) and then the ALA lists of YA book winners (Printz and Alex awards) but didn't find it, and finally found the Schneider award for a book about the disability experience, which is a bit ironic in that the main character, Piper, is Deaf but certainly doesn't consider herself disabled. But I would have nominated it for all of the above.

Anyway, I loved the book. I liked the family dynamics, with the family starting off rather disconnected by a series of shocks, including the father's unemployment and the baby's expensive operation to allow her to hear, paid for (surprise!) with the money from Piper's college fund. So Piper is intrigued by the idea of earning money by managing a band, which propels her into another community -- the three (soon five) members of Dumb, recent winners of Seattle's Teen Battle of the Bands. Piper narrates the story, which often had me laughing out loud or scanning ahead to see how things ended up. I particularly liked Piper's relationship with her younger brother Finn, who manages to save her band many times over the course of the book.

The book is set in Seattle, so I had fun recognizing places, especially Jimi Hendrix's burial spot, which is just up the road from my house. I found this book through Becky's Book Reviews, which makes it a challenge book! Woot! A

It's Monday! What Am I Reading?

This is probably a bad time to start this weekly check, because I just got back from vacation.  I brought a ton of books along, and let myself snack on anything I wanted, so now I am nibbling away at a small pile of books.  Oh well, I'll catch up by the next vacation.  This meme is hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey Through a World of Books.

In general I'm trying to whittle down my currently-reading pile, although it's hard to see that right now.  I like to read a library book, a book from my TBR shelves, and a social book (for book club or a challenge or something).  Then I'll be working on anything new I've purchased, as well as a current interest (right now it's all things Buffy).  So, that's my excuses.

Books I completed:

• Sammy Keyes and the Wedding Crasher, by Wendelyn Van Draanen
• Bobby Vs Girls (Accidentally), Lisa Yee
• Trust Me on This, Jennifer Crusie
• Alien Tango, Gini Koch
• The Magnificent 12: The Call, Michael Grant

Bookmarks still in:

• Eli the Good, by Silas House (ARC I got in the mail, so top of my TBR pile)
• Working Words, by M.L. Liebler (for Wisconsin challenge)
• Guardian of the Dead, Karen Healey (for Cybils challenge, moved up because it is due)
• Territory, Emma Bull (vacation book)
• Hammered, Elizabeth Bear (vacation book)
• Bad Prince Charlie, John Moore (vacation book)
• Interior Life, Katherine Blake (vacation book)
• Glass Harmonica, Louise Marley (vacation book)
• The Rogue's Return, Jo Beverly (vacation book)
• The Hob's Bargain, Patricia Briggs (vacation book)
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Panel to Panel, Scott Allie (Buffy book)

I actually have bookmarks in a few other books, but I'm not actively reading them.

I put aside two books because I realized that I don't actually want to read them:

• Sinful in Satin, by Madelyn Hunter, because I read the end on the plane and didn't care enough about the characters to see how they got there
• Crossfire, by Francis (father and/or son, I'm not sure) because I'm just not in the mood

In other challenge news, I've read 11 Cybils books, started my first Michigan book, read a few more Sci-Fi books, and checked off a few more states for Where Am I Reading.  No names, and I'm trying to decide if some books are off-kilter enough for 20/11,

Issue Book: Sold

It was perhaps unfortunate that I read (via Parenthetical.net) Rethinking Schools: Save the Muslim Girl! article right before reading Patricia McCormick's Sold.  The article talks about some of the problems with having all portrayals of Muslim girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan come from white women concerned with the oppression and degradation forced upon girls by their religion and culture. It's not a complete picture, and it encourages complacency about the status of women in the author's own culture.

Sold is about an oppressed and degraded Nepalese girl, and is written by a white woman.  It even has the victimizing picture of part of a girl's face, covered by a veil, as the cover.  The girl's step-father sells her into sexual slavery (possibly by accident) with the collusion of her willfully stupid mother, and then only the intercession of helpful Americans gives her a chance of rescue.  So it hits a lot of the warning notes sounded in the article.  Of course, it also appears to be a realistic account of things that have actually happened to girls in Lakshmi's situation.

For me personally, the short, blank-verse style paragraphs made Lakshmi seemed naive and slow, beyond what I'd expect from a thirteen year old.  Her mother seemed unreasonably stupid in supporting the evil step-father, explicitly telling her daughter that even a worthless man was better than no man but never giving any hints as to why.  I found myself wishing for a nonfiction version, so that I would know whether the foolishness was imposed by the author or just a part of our narrator.   But really I just tend to dislike verse novels in general, so I'm probably not the best reader for this book.

McCormick does vividly show the horrors of the situation; Laksmi's earlier, happier life and then the almost unremitting misery of the prostitution industry and how hopeless the women involved are.  It's an important issue, and this books helps people realize that it's a modern problem.  B-

Book Club Fun: Well-Schooled in Murder

Our book club is making a deliberate effort to read a wide variety of books this year, and we started out with a mystery.  (January is always a movie, which doesn't really count.)  To support me in my oddball preference of not starting a series with the first book, we choose Elizabeth George's 3rd book, Well-Schooled in Murder (Inspector Lynley). My theory on long series is that if the author can't hook me with a well-written middle book, it's probably not worth signing up for thousands of pages worth of a story.

George passes the test handily.  I forgot that it wasn't the first book;  all the characters were in the middle of their lives but in a good way, with enough information that I cared about where they were but didn't feel I had missed part of the story.  Of course, the concentration was on the current mystery, with spot lights on each passing character as they come under the scrutiny of Our Detectives, Lynley and Havers.  Although the writing tried to capture me, I found myself resisting because of the nature of the crime -- as the parent of a twelve-year-old boy, I find books about the torture and murder of twelve-year-old boys a bit hard to stomach.  I handle death scenes much better if I don't over-identify.  So I'll probably try some more George, but avoid the ones where she kills off my family members.  Most of the club hadn't finished the book, but we managed to talk about the various forms of guilt illustrated, from the child pornography user to the woman miscarrying and blaming her childhood abortion.