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Anyway, I've been reading books
Aug. 10th, 2024 08:01 amI actually just finished my 86th book of the year, which sounds impressive until you remember that a few months ago I sprained my ankle, and then I broke it, and then I got covid. I had a lot of time to lie around reading, is what I'm saying.
Anyway, I fell out of the habit of talking about my books here, because I already keep a spreadsheet and a paper reading journal, but here are some highlights, and also lights.
We Didn't Think It Through by Gary Lonesborough
Lonesborough is a gay Aboriginal man who writes YA about Aboriginal boys being complicated and messy and screwing up. He's a super important voice in local YA, and one who is actually read by teens. This is his second book, about a boy who steals the local white bully's car and goes for a joyride that ends up with the hero in juvie. How do you come of age and become a man when you're in prison? And what kind of man will you be?
I enjoyed this a lot, but -- as someone who is on the record as being against verse novels and against the causes of verse novels -- I think it needed more poetry. The protagonist is very much steeped in hip hop (he listens to Kendrick, as opposed to the white bully, who turns out to be a secret Bieber fan; if this book had been written just a year later, I think Bieber would have been swapped for Drake) and the classic Aboriginal folk and country music that his family listens to; a youth worker in prison turns him onto poetry. It's pretty clear that the publisher couldn't get the rights to quote the poems that become important to the hero, which is a real shame, but also I would have appreciated more of the hero's own poetic voice.
The F Team by Rawah Arja
You know how I'm always complaining that current YA doesn't give its characters space to be messy or hold bad opinions without stopping to reassure the reader that it's okay, they'll learn better? This book does not have that problem. I wanted to gently take the hero and his friends aside and go, "Boys, I'm gonna need you to be less antisemitic." Which kind of goes with the territory when you're reading a book about a group of Lebanese-Australian yoofs and their misadventures as they try -- initially half-heartedly -- to save their school (which is a real school, and its Wikipedia page is a trip) from closure.
When I was very small, my family lived in Sydney for a few years, and my class at my first school was almost 2/3 Lebanese-Australians. So I picked this up on a whim at the library, skimmed a few pages and was immediately transported back to my youth -- Arja has a great ear for dialogue and subtle class differences, as the boys come in contact with the more privileged boys of the Shire, and also earn the respect of the local teenage girls. It's a sports book in the most classic sense, but very enjoyable. And yes, the boys do learn to be less antisemitic as they help their new Jewish frenemy deal with the death of his father.
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Climbing Mount Everest seems to be a bad idea and no one should do it. But this was incredibly compelling, and I understand why it's a classic.
Flying Blind: The 737-MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing by Peter Robison
I'm slightly ashamed of reading about air disasters the same way I'm slightly ashamed of listening to true crime podcasts, although at least no one has decided that all plane nerds are sending love letters to Boeing. (Probably because the stereotypical plane nerd is a bloke, although the world's leading air disaster blogger is a trans woman.)
Anyway, I also love a business disaster, and obviously Boeing provides both in spades. This was very interesting, very humane, not too heavy on the physics, and I kind of wish I hadn't read it a few weeks before I'm due to fly to New Zealand on a Boeing 737.
The entire Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins
I don't think I've reread the first trilogy since Mockingjay came out, and it holds up really well -- although it has a lot more telling-not-showing than current YA, which has massively ballooned in size since the 2010s. Overall my opinions of the books are unchanged since my first read (Mockingjay in particular needed extra time for revisions, and I salute Collins for extracting herself from the "put out a book a year" treadmill, which obviously doesn't suit her writing), but I was struck by how perception of Katniss as a character has drifted away from the actual content of the books. I see a lot of people talk about her as a straightforward Strong Female Character, where it would be more accurate to say that each book leaves her progressively more broken and traumatised. Like, she spends two-thirds of Mockingjay passively watching and/or having trauma naps because she cannot cope with reality. Which doesn't make for compelling reading, but also isn't the uncomplicated heroine behaviour some readers complain of.
Anyway, I learned in the course of my reread that Collins lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and suddenly her urge to keep returning to this universe made sense.
The Firekeeper's Daughter and Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley
Two historical novels (one set in the 1990s, the other in 2014, I'm sorry, let's all take a moment to feel old) about teenage First Nations girls in Michigan. They're connected -- the heroine of the second is the niece of the first book's narrator -- and really amazing. Probably my favourite reads of 2024 so far. Both are essentially YA crime novels, but the first book deals with drugs, and in particular the impact of meth; the second deals with stolen First Nations artefacts and bodies.
The big trigger warning is that the first book includes a sexual assault on the heroine. It's rough! But also earned? I tore through these books in a couple of days, and at this point will read anything Boulley puts out.
Anyway, I fell out of the habit of talking about my books here, because I already keep a spreadsheet and a paper reading journal, but here are some highlights, and also lights.
We Didn't Think It Through by Gary Lonesborough
Lonesborough is a gay Aboriginal man who writes YA about Aboriginal boys being complicated and messy and screwing up. He's a super important voice in local YA, and one who is actually read by teens. This is his second book, about a boy who steals the local white bully's car and goes for a joyride that ends up with the hero in juvie. How do you come of age and become a man when you're in prison? And what kind of man will you be?
I enjoyed this a lot, but -- as someone who is on the record as being against verse novels and against the causes of verse novels -- I think it needed more poetry. The protagonist is very much steeped in hip hop (he listens to Kendrick, as opposed to the white bully, who turns out to be a secret Bieber fan; if this book had been written just a year later, I think Bieber would have been swapped for Drake) and the classic Aboriginal folk and country music that his family listens to; a youth worker in prison turns him onto poetry. It's pretty clear that the publisher couldn't get the rights to quote the poems that become important to the hero, which is a real shame, but also I would have appreciated more of the hero's own poetic voice.
The F Team by Rawah Arja
You know how I'm always complaining that current YA doesn't give its characters space to be messy or hold bad opinions without stopping to reassure the reader that it's okay, they'll learn better? This book does not have that problem. I wanted to gently take the hero and his friends aside and go, "Boys, I'm gonna need you to be less antisemitic." Which kind of goes with the territory when you're reading a book about a group of Lebanese-Australian yoofs and their misadventures as they try -- initially half-heartedly -- to save their school (which is a real school, and its Wikipedia page is a trip) from closure.
When I was very small, my family lived in Sydney for a few years, and my class at my first school was almost 2/3 Lebanese-Australians. So I picked this up on a whim at the library, skimmed a few pages and was immediately transported back to my youth -- Arja has a great ear for dialogue and subtle class differences, as the boys come in contact with the more privileged boys of the Shire, and also earn the respect of the local teenage girls. It's a sports book in the most classic sense, but very enjoyable. And yes, the boys do learn to be less antisemitic as they help their new Jewish frenemy deal with the death of his father.
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Climbing Mount Everest seems to be a bad idea and no one should do it. But this was incredibly compelling, and I understand why it's a classic.
Flying Blind: The 737-MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing by Peter Robison
I'm slightly ashamed of reading about air disasters the same way I'm slightly ashamed of listening to true crime podcasts, although at least no one has decided that all plane nerds are sending love letters to Boeing. (Probably because the stereotypical plane nerd is a bloke, although the world's leading air disaster blogger is a trans woman.)
Anyway, I also love a business disaster, and obviously Boeing provides both in spades. This was very interesting, very humane, not too heavy on the physics, and I kind of wish I hadn't read it a few weeks before I'm due to fly to New Zealand on a Boeing 737.
The entire Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins
I don't think I've reread the first trilogy since Mockingjay came out, and it holds up really well -- although it has a lot more telling-not-showing than current YA, which has massively ballooned in size since the 2010s. Overall my opinions of the books are unchanged since my first read (Mockingjay in particular needed extra time for revisions, and I salute Collins for extracting herself from the "put out a book a year" treadmill, which obviously doesn't suit her writing), but I was struck by how perception of Katniss as a character has drifted away from the actual content of the books. I see a lot of people talk about her as a straightforward Strong Female Character, where it would be more accurate to say that each book leaves her progressively more broken and traumatised. Like, she spends two-thirds of Mockingjay passively watching and/or having trauma naps because she cannot cope with reality. Which doesn't make for compelling reading, but also isn't the uncomplicated heroine behaviour some readers complain of.
Anyway, I learned in the course of my reread that Collins lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and suddenly her urge to keep returning to this universe made sense.
The Firekeeper's Daughter and Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley
Two historical novels (one set in the 1990s, the other in 2014, I'm sorry, let's all take a moment to feel old) about teenage First Nations girls in Michigan. They're connected -- the heroine of the second is the niece of the first book's narrator -- and really amazing. Probably my favourite reads of 2024 so far. Both are essentially YA crime novels, but the first book deals with drugs, and in particular the impact of meth; the second deals with stolen First Nations artefacts and bodies.
The big trigger warning is that the first book includes a sexual assault on the heroine. It's rough! But also earned? I tore through these books in a couple of days, and at this point will read anything Boulley puts out.
