So, fair warning that I know the author and my name might be listed in the thank-yous for having read an early draft of this. But look, it's about teenagers, and love, and fitting in, and musical theater, and long-lost parents, so there was no way I wouldn't enjoy a book like that. That I would LOVE it, that I would get all kinds of emotional over it, that I would be like OH MY GOD THIS BOOK, that has nothing to do with knowing the author, and everything to do with how talented a writer she is. I have read a lot of books by a lot of friends, and I enjoy many of them, but they're also often in varying states of readiness and disarray. This book, I was just like, Holy shit, this book is perfect, how is it not already published? How do I KNOW someone who wrote a book this solid? How is everyone not ALREADY talking about this book?
I'm really excited for all the people who are now finally going to get to have this book in their lives. I'm really excited that this book is now out in the world, for everyone. It's so, so good.
I really enjoyed Jeffrey's review of this book: http://behindheavydrapes.blogspot.com/2011/12/queer-art-of-failure.html
so I picked it up for myself but ultimately it was too academic for me to really enjoy (and the cultural subjects the author focuses on, including Spongebob Squarepants, Chicken Run, and Dude Where's My Car, aren't particularly engaging to me). I love the idea and I love that this book exists, it just wasn't for me at the current time.
Ahoy Booty! (Volume I)
I have a thing in this, but I basically just brought the napkins to this party. Really surprisingly delightful collection of butt-related art. It's hilarious and fun and gorgeous and human. Makes a great gift.
You know I actually did try to read this when it first came out, however many decades ago. I gave up about halfway through like Eh, who cares, boring. It’s a little hard to review objectively because I know how important this series is to my friends, I know NOW that the series is totally worth my investment. Actually reading the books seems almost academic.So the book? Is fine? I liked it. It drags in parts. The whole section with Hagrid’s dragon felt like a long way around, structurally, to get the characters where they needed to be at that point. And all the Quidditch, ugh. That a sport for magical wizards should be just as boring as sports in real life. I have prejudicial reservations about Chosen One characters like Harry, and I don’t understand what this Voldemort dude is supposed to BE (a semi-dead amorphous blob that somehow attached itself to Quirrell and needed Unicorn's Blood to stay, what, "alive"?) (???) (although really this just points to how mind-blowingly difficult it is to write an objective evil). I also don’t like all the adverbs, he said paternally. But OK if I’m sounding nitpicky.
But for every little part of the book that I didn’t like, there was a part where I got totally choked up with emotion. Like, ALL through the book. And the ending, between Hagrid giving Harry the photo album, and Neville getting the winning points, FORGET. ABOUT. IT. I could barely read. (I’m reading this aloud to my 7 year old son, so there’re emotions flying every which way.)
What I wonder is whether my emotions, my investment in these characters is really earned by this book. I kind of suspect it isn’t. I come to it with my feeeeelings about the characters pre-heated. The interesting thing (to me) is that those feeeeelings don’t really come from the book OR the movies--I haven’t seen all the movies, and honestly have a difficult time telling one from the next, or which one comes before which. The book and movies are just OK to me, but I LOVE the fandom, and I love the love that exists for the characters. So that’s my way in to the series, for better or worse.
So: 3 stars, + 1 extra star for me occasionally being unable to read this through my sobbing. On to the next one.
Good so far but mentally I'm not in the right space for this book. Will pick up again down the road.
I got about 2/3 through. Probably could have forced myself to finish it but it had to go back to the library. The book is divided into geographic sections, and he uses the landscape of the trips to compare where he was at geographically with where he was at mentally, w/r/t his relationship with a woman named "D". (It really annoyed me he couldn't just use her full name, or just make up a fake name, I mean who cares. Why the mystery? 10 seconds of googling reveals her name as Dolores.)
So basically Andrew McCarthy gets divorced and immediately launches into a relationship with Delores, and then has cold feet about their upcoming wedding and goes off to tour the world, leaving her with the kids and the wedding planning, ostensibly for his writing career but really just to "find himself". I found it very irritating that he didn't just work his shit out in person with Dolores like a dude should, and that she would support his bullshit spirit quest while she door-matted it back home.
Presumably somewhere on his travels, perhaps high atop the Himalayas, he comes to terms with his needs and finds himself, realizing he no longer needs to chase after something ineffable when what he wanted, what he needed, was right there in front of him all along blah blah but like I say I didn't finish it.
Kinnell picked this out at the library and we sailed through it in one night. He was super into it. It was fun-- kids find a strange new world, solve some problems, make it back home before anyone notices. No fuss, no muss. I guess if you want to get picky the world-building is a little random--why does the spider have a human head, why does the bad guy's car have an old-timey oooga-oooga horn? But hey! Whatever! Let's just have some fun and Droon it up.
Kinnell picked this up at the Scholastic book fair and we read it together. It's not that fun? For a short, MG book, the plot doesn't move along quickly enough, and lingers in weird, unnecessary places. The mc is not unlikeable, but also not super likeable. His personality and motivations are hard to get a hold of. At first I thought he sounded like a zippy devil-may-care younger brother outsider, but then a few chapters later he was a uncool-loser-and-doesn't-realize it outsider? Why does he have to be uncool, doesn't he have enough to deal with, with his new family and school and house and all these other changes? Odd authorial choice. The book just didn't have the ZIP I would expect from Henry Winkler. After this we switched to Secrets of Droon and that was much better.
Every time I come to Goodreads I think: You still need to write a review of Among Others. Why haven't you reviewed this book yet. I mean finished it when, over a month ago. And I'm STILL THINKING ABOUT IT. ALL THE TIME. But I don't even really know how to talk about it, or how to explain what I liked so much about it, other than: it's really original. I have not read any other books like this, there were a lot of things happening in this book that I totally lost my shit over, and mentally I haven't put this book down yet, and I don't see any indication that I'll set it aside any time soon.
08/11/2010Wasn't my favorite Marie Howe collection. Revisit in a few years.
UPDATE 11/25/2012
So glad I tried this one again, as expected I found a lot more to love here this time. Favorites included:
Part of Eve’s Discussion
"very much like the moment, driving on bad ice, when it occurs to you your car could spin, just before it slowly begins to spin"
From Nowhere
"a day comes, when you say what all winter / I’ve been meaning to ask, and a crack booms and echoes / where ice had seemed solid"
What Belongs To Us
"Not even the blisters. Look."
Recovery
"Is this how they felt after the flood? The floor / a mess, the garden ruined / the animals insufferable, cooped up so long?"
Gretel, from a sudden clearing
"deep into a wood / so darkly green, so deafening with birdsong / I stopped my ears"
"He invented a gun with five barrels that fired simultaneously and covered three hundred degrees in one blast. A hail of bullets, with a slim part, or what he called Das Dreieck des Wohlstands--The Triangle of Prosperity--inside of which stood the triggerman himself.""That's not a bad idea, actually."
"Unless you are fighting five men at once who happen to be standing directly in front of each barrel, it is a terrible idea."
"It shows imagination."
"It shows a complete disregard for safety and precaution."
"Anyway, it's interesting."
Having come to Tricia's writing* via Twitter I was expecting this collection to be full of the same x-rated pop culture snappiness as her writing online. But despite the popeye animals on the cover, this is Formal and Dense poetry, and in this book the author proves that she is a Serious Artist. I happen to like both, although at times the poems felt so full of imagery and symbolism that I had difficulty finding a clear line through to her voice. But that's about my personal poetry preferences, not about her writing. She's a really striking and electrifying writer and I hope I get to hear her read in person some day.Favorites were: "Good Climbing Trees Grow Us," "The Construction of a Forest for the Stage," and "The Quickening".
*coming to tricia's writing lol
