Wednesday Reading Meme (50. The Crossover)
Apr. 8th, 2015 03:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
I finished Ann Patchett’s This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, which I liked more than I expected per last week’s review. Of course it helped that there are a couple essays near the middle of the book about Truth & Beauty and the controversy that erupted when the book was assigned as summer reading for incoming freshman at Clemson University. (Some of the parents thought the book was way too gay - it talks about two women being best friends and stuff! Clearly a front for homosexuality! - and also referenced drug usage and extramarital sex and OMG, how could this be required reading???)
I also read Cece Bell’s El Deafo, which is a comic book memoir about growing up deaf. El Deafo was the name Bell gave her superheroine alter ego, who got superpowers from her amazing Phonic Ear and later from a glasses. It’s cute and sweet and not very memorable, although I did particularly like it’s portrayal of Cece’s first best friend, a girl who always insisted on doing what she wanted to do, exactly how she wanted to do it.
I had a friend like this is sixth grade. It was exactly as exasperating as Bell describes it: she came up with good ideas just often enough that it’s hard to extricate yourself, but it’s still extremely grating to have the games fall apart every time you assert your own opinions on things. (“How about the imaginary game we’re creating together doesn’t revolve around your princess character, hmm?”)
And finally, this year’s Newbery Winner, Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover, which like Brown Girl Dreaming is a book in verse. Another verse from the book:
Basketball Rule #10
A loss is inevitable,
like snow in winter.
True champions
learn
to dance
through
the storm.
As you may have guessed from this poem - and from the title, which is not only a basketball term but also a euphemism for death - this book totally fits into the category of sad Newbery books about death. Although actually it’s not super sad; it doesn’t even approach the level of sheer insurmountable misery in Out of the Dust, for instance. The death is sad, but there are plenty of not-sad things in the book as well, and the sheer exuberance of many of the poems - the ones describing basketball in particular, where the words themselves seem to bounce - balance it out.
Having said that, I’m reading this book as an adult, which means that I have enough experience with books that I noticed the big flashing THE FATHER IS GOING TO DIE signs that starting popping around around a quarter of the way in. As an eleven-year-old I might have been quite upset.
What I’m Reading Now
Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, which is an expansion of his article “Is Google making us stupid?” and, like many books that are expanded forms of magazine articles, doesn’t seem to have quite enough to say to make writing a whole book worthwhile. Carr argues that internet usage atrophies our attention spans: that, as we get used to digesting text and images in small chunks and jumping from one thing to another, we lose the ability to concentrate deeply that is central to reading books. I think he has a point, but I am somewhat doubtful that he needs 224 pages to make it.
I’ve also started Rosemary Kirstein’s The Steerswoman, which has not grabbed me so far, but I’m only a little ways in.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve finally gotten Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park from the library, which I’ve been meaning to do since I read Fangirl.
I’m also waiting for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch.
I finished Ann Patchett’s This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, which I liked more than I expected per last week’s review. Of course it helped that there are a couple essays near the middle of the book about Truth & Beauty and the controversy that erupted when the book was assigned as summer reading for incoming freshman at Clemson University. (Some of the parents thought the book was way too gay - it talks about two women being best friends and stuff! Clearly a front for homosexuality! - and also referenced drug usage and extramarital sex and OMG, how could this be required reading???)
I also read Cece Bell’s El Deafo, which is a comic book memoir about growing up deaf. El Deafo was the name Bell gave her superheroine alter ego, who got superpowers from her amazing Phonic Ear and later from a glasses. It’s cute and sweet and not very memorable, although I did particularly like it’s portrayal of Cece’s first best friend, a girl who always insisted on doing what she wanted to do, exactly how she wanted to do it.
I had a friend like this is sixth grade. It was exactly as exasperating as Bell describes it: she came up with good ideas just often enough that it’s hard to extricate yourself, but it’s still extremely grating to have the games fall apart every time you assert your own opinions on things. (“How about the imaginary game we’re creating together doesn’t revolve around your princess character, hmm?”)
And finally, this year’s Newbery Winner, Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover, which like Brown Girl Dreaming is a book in verse. Another verse from the book:
Basketball Rule #10
A loss is inevitable,
like snow in winter.
True champions
learn
to dance
through
the storm.
As you may have guessed from this poem - and from the title, which is not only a basketball term but also a euphemism for death - this book totally fits into the category of sad Newbery books about death. Although actually it’s not super sad; it doesn’t even approach the level of sheer insurmountable misery in Out of the Dust, for instance. The death is sad, but there are plenty of not-sad things in the book as well, and the sheer exuberance of many of the poems - the ones describing basketball in particular, where the words themselves seem to bounce - balance it out.
Having said that, I’m reading this book as an adult, which means that I have enough experience with books that I noticed the big flashing THE FATHER IS GOING TO DIE signs that starting popping around around a quarter of the way in. As an eleven-year-old I might have been quite upset.
What I’m Reading Now
Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, which is an expansion of his article “Is Google making us stupid?” and, like many books that are expanded forms of magazine articles, doesn’t seem to have quite enough to say to make writing a whole book worthwhile. Carr argues that internet usage atrophies our attention spans: that, as we get used to digesting text and images in small chunks and jumping from one thing to another, we lose the ability to concentrate deeply that is central to reading books. I think he has a point, but I am somewhat doubtful that he needs 224 pages to make it.
I’ve also started Rosemary Kirstein’s The Steerswoman, which has not grabbed me so far, but I’m only a little ways in.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve finally gotten Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park from the library, which I’ve been meaning to do since I read Fangirl.
I’m also waiting for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch.
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no subject
Date: 2015-04-08 07:28 pm (UTC)That's fascinating! Never let these people near the nineteenth century, I guess. :\
no subject
Date: 2015-04-08 07:43 pm (UTC)(To be fair to Clemson, most of the actual students seem to have been chill with it. There was just one really loud obnoxious parent spearheading a crusade.)
no subject
Date: 2015-04-08 09:48 pm (UTC)And stick with The Steerswoman! It starts slow, but it's really good!