smut, smart kids, & the hijab

[furyofvissarion]

Blood Bound - Patricia Briggs. This is the sequel to Moon Called. Our heroine, Mercy, is a mechanic (who actually needs to work in order to pay the bills, how refreshing) & a walker: she can turn into a coyote. In this volume, a demon-possessed vampire is threatening her friends (which include werewolves & vampires). Um, this is all sounding really hokey, but I did like this book. I like that Mercy isn't glamorous or rich (she lives in a trailer), & that she struggles w/the animal hierarchy of the nearby werewolf pack (whom she hangs out w/) & how that clashes w/her human sensibilities: it's a lot of the same stuff I like in Carrie Vaughn's work.

Dead Sexy - Tate Hallaway. This, too, is a sequel. Garnet Lacey is a Wiccan who is currently housing the goddess Lilith in her body. Lilith came to live there a year ago when Vatican Witch hunters killed Garnet's coven, & she asked for something to help protect herself. Lilith slaughtered the Witch hunters. Now Garnet is living in a new city (Madison, WI, happily enough) & is trying to start a new life as the manager of an occult bookstore. But danger keeps popping up (this time, in the form of a pesky FBI agent & a bunch of zombies), just like hot guys keep popping up... This book & its predecessor, Tall, Dark & Dead, are both fluffy fun. Nothing earthshaking, but fun. And I love that they take place in Madison.

Hothouse Kids: The Dilemma of the Gifted Child - Alissa Quart. I cringed all the way through this book. Quart explores some of the many ways in which the children of the privileged today are being pushed to excel: soccer lessons for 3-year-olds, baby sign language classes, weird contraptions you strap onto your belly because you need to stimulate your baby's mind even in utero... It's all horrifying, & disturbing. Must childhood now be totally regimented & professionalized (ie. if you're good at skateboarding, at age 8 you become a pro, like Mitchie Brusco; or the 4-year-old 'painter' Marla Olmstead, whose paintings go for thousands & for which there is a waiting list of 200 people)? Can't kids just play for the sake of playing? Apparently not, if you've got the money to burn. And, of course, where does this leave those who don't have the money to burn? I had a v. personal reaction to this book, as one who grew up "gifted" but not brilliant, definitely not a prodigy. I got to go to nerd camp, although it was definitely a budget crunch for my parents. But I never would've been able to, say, have intense ice-skating lessons (I think of how Sarah Hughes, growing up in Great Neck, got ferried to New Jersey every day for training. New Jersey! From Long Island! Who has the time or money to do that, not to mention paying for the actual coaching?). Could I have been some kind of child star, if only my parents had the money to burn? Who knows? I don't think every child is brilliant; I don't think I'm brilliant. But it seems pretty obvious that, when you have money, your kids generally can achieve a lot more. News flash, I know. Still, this book alternately horrified me & made me green w/envy.

Does My Head Look Big in This? - Randa Abdel-Fattah. Amal is an Australian-Palestinian high school girl living outside of Melbourne. She's just decided to wear the hijab full-time. Abdel-Fattah does a good job in showing the various stupid reactions that people have, & Amal's clever retorts. She also does a good job of showing that, y'know, women who wear the hijab may not be the inconceivable aliens that some think. While sometimes I think she tries too hard to sound cool (although I feel that way w/a lot of contemporary YA), the book is funny & smart. And some of the dialogue between Amal & her friends, when they're talking about boys, is so spot-on & reminiscent of my own adolescence that I was rolling.

Comments

[nevers.livejournal.com]

ooh, i really want to read _does my head…_

[furyofvissarion.livejournal.com]

You can borrow it if you want!

[nevers.livejournal.com]

heather got it from the library for me and i read it tonight and it made me cry so much! i was kind of annoyed by the whole theme of "we're muslim but we still care about fashion and makeup and frizzy hair," but maybe that's just because i never cared about that stuff too much. i thought it was a fantastic book to make readers look at their own racism and get a new understanding of things.

[furyofvissarion.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm so glad you liked it!

I was, oddly, really into hair & fashion & stuff when I was a preteen & younger teenager (& I tried out for cheerleading in 6th grade!), even while I was doing all the nerdy stuff like role-playing games & Transformers & crap too. So I could identify w/that, like, being into that sort of mainstream stuff, but also being something v. different, that most ppl assume would preclude you even being able to participate in that kind of teenage normalcy.

[sarrabellum.livejournal.com]

I tried to read an Alissa Quart book. Once. It was soooo badly written that I don't know if I could bring myself to attempt another.

[furyofvissarion.livejournal.com]

Heh! Which one? I thought the writing style was okay, but maybe that's just b/c I was so fascinated/horrified by the stuff she was writing about that I was able to ignore it.

[sarrabellum.livejournal.com]

It was called Branded, I believe. Most of my issues with it could have easily been fixed by a decent editor, but there are only so many misused commas, misplaced apostrophes, and misused and misspelled words that I can deal with before my head explodes. :)

[furyofvissarion.livejournal.com]

there are only so many misused commas, misplaced apostrophes, and misused and misspelled words that I can deal with before my head explodes

Oh yes. Definitely. I've been thrown out of the narrative of so many books for this reason!