Book Review: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

I heard about this book from a facebook friend, and decided to download it when I came upon it while browsing the North Carolina Digital Library. I figured it would be a fairly quick, uncomplicated read, especially since I enjoy reading YA fantasy when I don't feel like thinking. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children didn't disappoint.

Sixteen-year-old Jacob has grown up listening to his grandfather's stories about his childhood, poring over the pictures he has saved throughout the years. Born into a Jewish family in Europe, Jacob's grandfather was spirited to a lonely island off the Welsh coast, where he resided in a children's home full of unusual children. As Jacob grows older, he comes to believe that his grandfather's stories were fairy tales and the photographs were fake-- until his grandfather dies under mysterious circumstances. Haunted by the memory of his grandfather's death and the mementos he left behind, Jacob travels to Wales to uncover the true nature of his family's history.

This book reads a lot like A Series of Unfortunate Events, so if you liked that, you'll probably enjoy this. Full of weird, old-fashioned photography and intriguing characters, it's a highly entertaining light read. 4 out of 5 stars.

Book Review: Matched by Ally Condie

I saw Matched in the library about a year ago and considered picking it up, but decided against it because I already had a gigantic stack of books. I resolved to pick it up later and promptly forgot about it until a friend of mine mentioned having read it. She didn't particularly care for it, but since YA dystopian novels are my quasi-literary crack, I decided to give it a shot.

Like most of the YA dystopian novels floating about, Matched takes place in a world of extreme social control, and the main plot point centers around forbidden love and illicit words. If you think that sounds a lot like the plot to Delirium, you're absolutely right. The two books are very similar; both involve star-crossed teenage lovers whose relationship would undermine the authority of their society, and so they must fight the society in order to be together and blah blah blah.

The world of Matched is really similar to The Giver in a variety of ways: characters are scheduled to be born, attend school, marry, have children, and die, and job functions are assigned based on a series of aptitude tests. The high point of everyone's life is their Match Banquet, in which they are paired off with their future spouse. Cassia, the protagonist, is slated to marry her childhood friend, Xander-- but someone makes a mistake and she is also shown the face of a longtime classmate, Ky. Drawn to Ky, she makes a series of choices that threaten the safety of everyone she knows. It's a pretty standard plot and is enjoyable in a brain candy kind of way.

I much preferred Delirium, but I'm in the queue for the sequel, Crossed, so it's not all bad. 3 out of 5 stars.

Book Review: Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

I don't buy a lot of books these days. Grad school ate my life and my wallet, after all, and I've therefore been getting the vast majority of my reading materials from the library. Unfortunately, it takes the library a while to get new releases, especially in the kids section, and I didn't want to wait to read Pandemonium, Lauren Oliver's sequel to Delirium, which I really enjoyed and reviewed here.

As is my custom, I'll be putting my review of Pandemonium behind a jump so as to not spoil the ending of Delirium for those of you who haven't read it yet.

Book Review: Hana by Lauren Oliver

I pre-ordered copies of Hana and Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver back in January. They were finally ready to download a couple of days ago. I have since finished Hana and am about halfway through Pandemonium. You all know how I get about these dystopian YA novels.

Hana is essentially Delirium from Lena's best friend Hana's perspective; the reader gets to see what was going on with Hana during that tumultuous summer. I can't go into the plot without revealing too much about the end of Delirium, but I can say that it provided an eye-opening look into the world of Delirium and provided the reader with some much-needed context of why things happened the way they did.

You don't have to read it to get the other books, but at only sixty-four pages, it's not a big commitment and is fairly enjoyable (though I found the ending a bit jarring and abrupt). 4 out of 5 stars.

Book Review: Goliath by Scott Westerfeld

I finally got my hands on the third and final installment of the Leviathan series by Scott Westerfeld a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I can't really describe it or its plot points in detail without spoiling the end of the first book and all of the second, so I'll hit the high points: Siberia, Japan, the United States, hot air balloons, Tesla, espionage, assassination plots, and cute critters. It wraps up the previous two books nicely, and all of the things I said about the series (good and bad) in the previous reviews hold true for this one.

Overall, it's a very entertaining and engaging read. 4 out of 5 stars.

The Other Books I Read This Year

...That I didn't have time to post individual reviews for. Hold on, folks, this is gonna be a long one.

First up is Sharon Hays' Flat Broke with Children, which I read for a research paper on the 1996 PRWORA legislation, commonly known as "welfare reform" in the US (yes, all of my papers were on similarly cheerful subjects). Overall, I really enjoyed it-- as much as you can enjoy a book about poor single mothers getting screwed over by judgmental, affluent male politicians and their supporters. Hays combines reviews of scholarly literature and her own long-term observations of a cohort of TANF clients in a few cities in her illuminating account of the true motives of the legislation and the effects it has had on AFDC/TANF participants.

Now, whenever I recommend books on poverty in America, I always mention this one along with Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On not Getting By in America. Together, I think they paint a fairly accurate picture of why upward mobility in the US is so difficult.

5 out of 5 stars.

More reviews behind the jump: War is Boring by David Axe, The Card-Turner by Louis Sachar, Shine by Lauren Myracle, Bumped by Megan McCafferty, When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris, and The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson.

Book Review: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

I finally got a chance to read this book yesterday/today, after over a month of waiting my turn in the library's hold queue! It nearly killed me.

As usual, later books in a series will be discussed behind a pagebreak. If you haven't read The Hunger Games and don't want to be spoiled, don't click it! I won't be spoiling the end of Catching Fire, though, so if you haven't read it yet, you can still read my review.

Book Review: Delirium by Lauren Oliver

I've been looking forward to reading Delirium ever since I read Before I Fall, which is written by the same author. The two books turned out to be very different; Delirium is a dystopian novel set in the possibly-distant, possibly-sooner-than-we-realize future, while Before I Fall takes place in the present day. While both feature teenage girls as protagonists, the characters and their struggles are dramatically different, as are the love stories that figure prominently in the respective novels' plots. Both books, however, are about freedom. Before I Fall is about the freedom to be who you are and the importance of treating others well, while Delirium is about having the freedom to feel.

Imagine a world in which there is no love or hate, and love has been pathologized into a disease: Amor deliria nervosa, symptoms of which include the expected fevers and sweaty palms as well as delusions, fits, and even death. The United States, in an effort to rid its population of the disease, has closed its borders, ordered citizens into cities, and either killed or imprisoned those who refused to undergo the mysterious Cure (as well as those for whom the Cure does not "take," and continue to experience the deliria anyway).

Lena, the seventeen-year-old protagonist, is only a few months away from her Cure, which is to take place on her eighteenth birthday, at the outset of the novel, and she eagerly looks forward to it. Her entire life, she has been emotionally and socially haunted by her mother's suicide, and believes that the Cure will ensure that she will be safe-- safe from her mother's untimely fate, and safe from the judgment of those who believe that her mother's actions have contaminated her. The Cure, as it turns out, (when it works, which isn't always) renders those who have had it immune to passion: they are incapable of love and hate, and drift through life in a contented haze. Lena desperately wants this, believing it will fix her conflicted feelings regarding her mother and enable her to lead a happy, normal life.

Lena's careful, safe world begins to fall apart on the day of her evaluation, in which she was to be interviewed by the scientists and bureaucrats responsible for both administering the Cure, assigning her to her higher educational path, and selecting her husband. Needless to say, they are all too aware of Lena's familial background, and the pressure both her family and Lena herself place on her is extreme. Her aunt drills her for hours, so that Lena will answer the questions as normally and inoffensively as possible. During the evaluation (which Lena is in the process of flubbing), a herd of painted cows stampedes through the facility. In the chaos, Lena sees a young man on a walkway above, laughing at the spectacle. She later encounters him while on a run with her best friend, Hana, and he confirms that the incident was the work of Invalids, un-Cured people who live outside of the electrical walls of the city and its laws. Soon, Lena has to decide between learning the dangerous truth and living out the rest of her life in a sanitized, safe lie, and must deal with the ramifications of her choice.

Delirium was really, really good. Oliver's knack for characterization is evident here as well as in Before I Fall. Even though I initially found Lena to be an irritating fraidy-cat, I grew to sympathize and love her over the course of the narrative, and enjoyed the way in which her character and her relationships with her family, Hana, and Alex played out. Beyond that, I found the idea of a world in which love is considered a serious disease to be intriguing, and especially appreciated Alex's take on things: that love and hate are not the most dangerous feelings: indifference is, as that is what causes people to lose their humanity and to treat one another terribly. Oliver does an excellent job depicting the callous brutality that underpins the safety of Lena's world.

Obviously, I'm looking forward to the sequel. 4 out of 5 stars.

Book Review: Naughts and Crosses by Malorie Blackman

I picked up Naughts and Crosses at the library a few weeks ago after reading positive reviews of it on amazon.com. I think it's safe to say the 2011, in addition to being the year in which I read a bunch of Victorian literature and classic feminist works, is the year where I read a whole bunch of dystopian young adult novels. So far, I'm enjoying the trend, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before I tire of them and seek out something a touch more "serious."

Naughts and Crosses is typical of the genre in many respects. It tells of a friendship that blossoms into love between two members of opposing castes: Sephy (short for Persephone) is a Cross, while Callum is a Naught. Brought together by happenstance (Callum is the son of Sephy's nanny), their friendship endures after Callum's mother is unfairly fired by Sephy's family. As a member of the uppercrust of Crosses, Sephy isn't supposed to associate with Callum, but she can't seem to stop herself. Callum faces similar social pressures; his father and older brother have joined a militant group of Naughts who engage in domestic terrorism against the oppressive Cross regime, and they dislike his desire to attend a Cross school and remain friends with Sephy. Sephy and Callum find themselves caught in the middle of a violent social struggle.

The interesting thing about Naughts and Crosses is that its dystopia is racially inversed: Crosses, who rule the world, are black, while Naughts, who are only fifty years out from being slaves, are white. Visualizing the characters was sort of weirdly difficult for me; I had to keep reminding myself that Sephy was black and Callum was white, not the other way around. It's a sad commentary on the pervasiveness of racism in the human consciousness (and literary mind): no matter how progressive my politics may be, the idea of black people oppressing white people, even in a fictional context, kind of breaks my brain.

It was disorienting, but in a good way: band-aids are "flesh-colored"-- darkly, and stand out in stark contrast against the Naughts' skin, fashion magazines feature only black women, and Naughts are considered soulless because of their lack of color, or skin pigmentation. Religious texts and history books downplay the significance of Noughts and their contributions to society, and they are continually subjected to economic and social oppression. It was really interesting to see what a racist society in which whiteness is discriminated against might look like, and what being on the receiving end of it might be like. In light of the brain-twistiness that reading this book caused me (and, apparently, a lot of other people), I think it would make a really good movie.

3.5 out of 5 stars. There are apparently a few sequels, but I don't think I'm going to read them. I liked the way Noughts and Crosses ended so much that I'll pretend like it's a stand-alone novel.

Book Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My ongoing obsession with dystopian novels led me to borrow this book from the library along with The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Leviathan, and Broke, USA (see? I do read serious stuff occasionally). I'd heard good things about it from friends (who didn't like Twilight-- I keep saying this because all of the people who recommended I read that awful book are barred for life from giving me reading advice), and am always a fan of dystopian novels. That it centers around characters from Appalachia is an added bonus. People from here tend to be portrayed as ignorant hillbillies in the popular media, and even serious novels tend to treat us as pathetic and helpless children who need to be rescued.

Needless to say, I'm a big fan of Katniss, the heroine. She is strong, brave, and absolutely committed to not dying, even in the face of extreme moral ambiguity. I also enjoyed the world of The Hunger Games which, although dystopian in nature, manages to highlight inequalities that currently exist in the United States. All told, very well done.

I give it a 4 out of 5. I can't wait to read the next two installments (hurry up, other library patrons!).

Book Review: Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

I've been a fan of Jasper Fforde for a while now. I read The Eyre Affair the summer after I graduated from college (2007), and have slowly working my way through his books ever since. I've finished the two Nursery Crimes Division novels, The Big Over Easy and The Fourth Bear, which were quite enjoyable along with the two following books from the Thursday Next Series, Lost in a Good Book and The Well of Lost Plots. I confess that I haven't read the two most recent installments, Something Rotten and Thursday Next: First Among Sequels. It's not because I haven't enjoyed the first three; it's because I don't want the series to end. I guess this is a good enough time to admit that I occasionally become ridiculously attached to fictional characters and book series. I was pretty sad about Harry Potter ending, too.


Needless to say, I was delighted when I went to the library last month and discovered that Fforde had launched a new series. The first installment, Shades of Grey, was perched on the shelf right next to Something Rotten. (There will ultimately be three novels in the series.) I immediately checked it out and brought it home. Like most of Fforde's books, I finished it very quickly. Had I not had to work a ton of shifts that week, I probably would have knocked it out in a single afternoon. As it were, I wound up taking two or three days, and I enjoyed every single page.


I loved Shades of Grey for three key reasons:

1. I am obsessed with dystopian novels. Ob-freaking-sessed. It is my favorite genre, and if there were enough of them to where I could read nothing else for the rest of my life, there's a good chance I'd do exactly that. I was hooked from the moment I finished reading The Giver in fourth grade. I'm actually considering hosting a dystopian novels challenge in 2012 (don't have enough time to get one together for 2011).
2. I really like Jasper Fforde's previous work, and Shades of Grey is just as good, if not better, than many of his other novels. I know a lot of people aren't really into speculative fiction, but I have something of a soft spot for it. I don't generally care for science fiction or fantasy (too many spaceships and unicorns, respectively, substituting for plot devices and good writing), but I like the idea of A World That Is Kinda Like Ours But Not, that has its own set of conventions and rules that the author consistently follows. Fforde is an expert at crafting familiar yet disconcerting worlds that are plausible yet nevertheless keep the reader's curiosity piqued. He is also quite whimsical and silly at points, and the levity of carnivorous plants and the illegality of spoon production help to keep the story from becoming leaden and depressing. 
3. I have spent excessive amounts of time contemplating the following things: why humans can't see color in the dark, what it's like to be colorblind and unable to see my favorite color (green), whether my cats can see in color, and why I sometimes dream in black and white and others in color. 

Shades of Grey, like all of Fforde's novels and pretty much all dystopian works in general, is a work of speculative fiction that takes place in a world that is very similar to the one that we inhabit, but has many disorienting differences. Foremost among these is that the world revolves around color and the ability to see it; one's social rank is determined based upon which colors you can see, and the extent to which you can see them. Color vision is measured on a 100-point scale, and if you can see two colors within a certain number of points of one another, you are designated a secondary color (purple, orange, or green). One's ability to see color determines everything, from one's employment to one's marriage prospects, leading to cutthroat competition to ensure that one's family rises through the perception ranks. For if one is Grey and sees no color at all, one is condemned to a life of servitude and menial labor. Most of the characters in Shades of Grey see only one (sometimes two) colors; anything of another color that has not been artificially enhanced through the application of distilled pigment appears grey. Also, they can't see in the dark at all. 

Weird hierarchies are a hallmark of dystopian novels, as are the mystery-shrouded origins of said hierarchy. Shades of Grey is no exception. Something Happened a long time ago, and ever since then, the world has been ruled by a book of occasionally relevant, sometimes obscure, and often ridiculous Rules that dictate everything from the necessity of team sports to the sanctity of queues to the banning of spoon production (spoons become a hot commodity as a result). Such orderly societies inevitably produce discontents, and Eddie Russett, the protagonist, is very emblematic of the accidental revolutionary who pops up throughout the dystopian genre. Much like Winston Smith in 1984, Eddie is very much invested in the social order; he is desperate to marry up-color into the Oxbloods, an old family that controls a large string empire in addition to possessing an impressive Red pedigree. When a childish prank gets him sent to the far reaches of Chromatacia with a humiliating assignment (conducting a chair census), he meets a number of individuals who turn his view of the orderly society upside down. Havoc ensues. 

I can't say much more without giving the whole thing away, so I'll stop here. I can't wait for the next installment to come out next year, and I highly recommend this book. 5 out of 5 stars.