A fine read...

When I dropped The House of Tomorrow on my "Best YA book I've read lately..." wall (see right and below), I expected it to linger there for a nice long while. I didn't expect to read another top-shelf YA book so soon after that one. But Chris Lynch's Hothouse is just that. Russell and DJ, neighbors and friends and sons of friends so tight that they were named after each other's firefighter father, have suffered the simultaneous and horrific loss of those men in a tragic fire. They spend last half of the summer before their senior year dealing with their own grief as well as the grief of an entire community. The novel is predominantly Russell's story and speaks from his perspective entirely.

Not only has Lynch anticipated a host of situations that make life difficult for Russell -- way beyond the predictable ones -- but he carefully and beautifully depicts the wrenching mixed feelings that go along these experiences. While not a novel of action and event, it remains a roller coaster of emotion as Russell struggles to heal, live through memorials staged less for his benefit than his grieving neighbors, and negotiate subsequent rumor and official inquiry into the incident. It is a novel about love, friendship, courage, forgiveness and the human need for heroes. The depictions of Russell, DJ, and friends Adrian and Melanie are finely drawn. The dialog is crisp and perfect. There is not a wasted line in this novel.

From the looks of his author photo, Lynch is no longer a teenager -- which is surprising, because part of his brain -- the right part as far as YA lit is concerned -- functions in great detail like a much younger man. I will allow The House of Tomorrow  linger on the wall a bit longer; but it's nice having an excellent replacement on deck.

Buckminster Fuller and Sid Vicious!

Peter Bognanni's novel The House of Tomorrow is delightful! Sebastian, a home-schooled teen kept from society by his reclusive grandmother Nina, and Jared, an irreverent, rude but ultimately lovable heart transplant recipient, become unlikely friends. In a way they are 21st century's versions of Neil Simon's The Odd Couple. Sebastian's naivete is an excellent foil for Jared's sarcasm and vice versa as both boys negotiate their way through trying events. Sebastian spends a fair amount of time measuring the wisdom of Buckminster Fuller, thanks to Nina's indoctrination, against his real world experience -- specifically his exposure to Sid Vicious and punk rock, thanks to Jared. Along the way, the boys form a punk band -- The Rash -- and have their eyes set on a talent competition at (ready for further ironic structure?) the local Methodist Church.

Despite the outlandishly disparate elements involved, Bognanni deftly handles the humor and what might have been childish and overbearing in less able hands, becomes pitch-perfect timing and delivery. The author never subsumes the serious elements of his story for the humor -- nor the other way round. The story is reminiscent of Frank Portman's King Dork, Mark Haddon's The  Curious Incident of the Dog at Night, Francisco X. Stork's Marcelo in the Real World and Matt Ruff's Set This House in Order -- depending what page you're on. Not that it matters much -- there isn't a bad one in the book.

Printz Award

January is always a nice month for books since the ALA announces many of their awards at the annual midwinter meeting. Among these is one of my favorites, the Printz Award for best Young Adult title. This year's winner is Ship Breaker by Paolo Bacigalupi. Finalists include Stolen by Lucy Christopher, Please Ignore Vera Dietz  by A.S. King, Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick, and Nothing by Janne Teller.

I suspect there are lots of librarians who, like me, give themselves credit for having selected these books for their collection sometime before the awards are announced -- a little metric of the ability to glean what's really good from the various review sources. This year my fellow librarians and I were 4 for 5, which felt pretty good. Sadly, I hadn't actually read them, but I'm starting to make up for that. I recently finished Ship Breaker and while I thought it was good, I'm not convinced it's as good as previous winners. (I make an exception to Libba Bray's Going Bovine, the lure of which I missed completely.) I also wonder how it measures up against the field of finalists, but will have to reserve judgment until I've read them all.

Ship Breaker is set on a post environmental apocalyptic gulf coast beach -- a little spooky, since Bacigalupi must have dreamed this up sometime before last year's oil spill. Nailer is a young scavenger of anything of value from the chemically saturated and rusting tankers that wash up on the reef. It's dangerous and ugly work that affords the small, lawless beach society little more than a day to day existence.

Bacigalupi adds an interesting twist to a world that's bereft of resources, however. His global demise does not crush everyone -- only the folks who can't afford to buy their way out of subsistence living. This other half, known by Nailer and his ilk as the Swanks, intersects with scavenging life only when one of their high tech clipper ships skims past on the horizon. Hence, Nailer and his crewmate Pima are feeling very lucky when they come upon the wreck of a clipper abound with treasure. Also aboard, however, is Nita and that changes everything.

When Nailer and Pima find the barely alive Nita, they immediately consider killing her in order to preserve their claim on the clipper. If Bacigalupi hadn't set up the terror and precariousness of Nailer's existence so well, we'd find ourselves unsympathetic to the dilemma of offing Nita or not. But, indeed, we are. Getting rid of Nita is squarely in the best interest of two young people forced to live an unlivable life. It's to Bacigalupi's credit, too, that we are not convinced -- even though reasonable plot progression predicts otherwise -- that they won't kill her.

They don't. Instead, they rescue her and so begins a tale of flight, chase and evasion. The plot continues to hold up admirably and the characters are reasonably drawn but the gritty clip with which Bacigalupi masterfully launches his novel has lost its edge. None of Bacigalupi's subsequent settings or events are as well refined or described in equally exacting prose. I finished just short of the ending over a weekend but was never desperate to finish up the last 30 pages. When I did -- around Wednesday -- I realized the end of the novel had fallen off the mark. I'll give Bacigalupi, credit, however. It was his mark; he set it high and sustained it for a healthy half.

Too harsh an assessment? Possibly. Still, both Marlina Marchetta's Jellicoe Road and Geraldine McCaughrean'sThe White Darkness (Printz winners 2009 and 2008 respectively) do a better job depicting and sustaining inner turmoil than Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker -- something I think should be essential for a Printz award.  

Is there a word for that?

There's nothing like the experience of a great read to get all fired up about books and reading in general. I wonder if any language has a word for the the somewhat desperate desire to find and begin reading immediately another good book right after finishing a fabulous one?

I enjoyed that feeling and the book that brought it on was David Mitchell's latest, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. It's the turn of the 18th century and de Zoet has just arrived on Dejima, an isolated island enclave in Nagasaki harbor. Dejima is the only trading port in Japan, a country which restricts interaction with the West to this small community of traders. The young bookkeeper is tasked to sort out the ledgers of the Dutch trading company and sniff out the corruption.  De Zoet discovers the intrigue within and without the walls of Dejima and while his story remains central, the stories of a lovely but scarred midwife and a Japanese interpreter are woven seamlessly through de Zoet's.

Mitchell is a master wordsmith and I wonder if this might be his opus. In my opinion it is so far, which is saying something, since his other titles are wonderful. Thousand Autumns easily falls into the category of "sweeping epic" but reads like a gripping adventure. A friend who was lured in by my description asked it she'd be hooked in the first 50 of the nearly 500 pages. I picked up the book, looked at the first chapter and responded, "I'll give you nine." I've read a lot of good books that start off with a breathtaking beginning that, unfortunately, plateaus off quickly never to return. Not only can Mitchell make his pages absolutely sing, make evident a tremendous body of research and take on some very big ideas -- he can map out a rising and falling plot to perfection.

What I've Been Reading....

Not enough. Although never enough is  probably the status quo with me. Still, I'll try to provide some highlights from my summer.

Entering Hades: The Double Life of a Serial Killer by John Leake

My secret brain candy is true crime and this one came recommended to me by my Page-A-Day Book Lover's Calendar -- an eclectic but excellent source of titles. This is the true story of Jack Unterweger, a murderer who becomes the pet of the Austrian literati upon his release from prison only to begin again. He even poses as a journalist and visits the police to investigate his own crime spree! A good example of truth is stranger than fiction.

Carpe Jugulum by Terry Pratchett

There's little I enjoy more than a bit of Pratchett. The perfect anecdote to heavy-duty literature and haunting crime. Pratchett makes me laugh in every paragraph. Pratchett's witch trio Nanny Ogg, Granny Weatherwax and Agnes Nitt are the central champions of the story of Lancre, a town poised to be taken over by modern vampires -- ghouls that have trained themselves to be impervious to garlic, holy water and sunlight.

Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore

Am I really listing two vampire novels? Guess so. Moore and Pratchett's titles are more spoofs of vampire novels, however. Moore's is certainly adult humor all the way and not something the prudish will enjoy. Still this love story set in San Francisco is hilarious. My personal favorite along with his other vampire tale, You Suck.

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene

My vanity insists I include some serious literature on this list and can I say that revisiting Greene's novel of the Catholic oppression in Mexico last century is musical and remarkable. This title, to me, is reminiscent of Steinbeck in that seemingly simple incidents and dialog suggest powerful and thought provoking philosophical discussion.

In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck

I can't remember how this title came across my radar, but whoever put it there included the observation s/he deemed it Steinbeck's best. Steinbeck's best? And I didn't even know about it. Well glad I rectified that. I love Grapes of Wrath -- so much that I can still make an argument for including it on a high school curriculum. That said, here's the first title I'd consider substituting in lieu of Grapes. Here, Steinbeck tells the story of labor unrest from the organizer's perspective which allows him to cut to the chase in much of what he considers from the working man's point of view in Grapes. Surely less epic in scope, but Steinbeck is a magician at hiding big ideas behind spare dialog and events. 

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

The only regret I have about Joyce is that reading him in short spurts -- which is usually all life permits me -- does not afford his language the attention it deserves. Flocks of good writers can compose music out of words, but Joyce, I think, is among the few that manages a symphony. Putting the lyrical qualities aside, Portrait is also a coming-of-age story everyone should read.

Gone too long...

Not only have a few great books re-inspired me to get my blog going again, but a few great conversations about books, too! Addressing the latter first, my first great conversation was my school's second annual ReCreate Reading Day -- a day in which everyone at school participates in small reading discussion groups. Anecdotal information and post-ReCreate Reading survey results confirm a resounding success! Highlights include a Skype session with author Dave Cullen (Columbine) and approximately 60 students. Our head of school came by to tell me that is was excellent. When the bell rang to end the session, no one moved. Surely, the ultimate teen-endorsement of a reading experience. My only regret was that I missed it because I was facilitating a discussion on Lev Grossman's The Magicians -- hardly a hardship since the kids loved this book as much as I did and it was so wonderful talking about it. Conversation quickly got to discussion of ethics of leadership and morality of power and such. Also, the kids tell me Grossman has a sequel due out summer 2011. Let's hope it's on time!

The second conversation about books happened just yesterday in my school library's reading club -- which we call the Non-Required Reading Reading Club. The basis is that we don't require reading of anything in particular. Students just come in and talk about whatever they've read lately. It's a small group, but wonderful. A student shared his recent discovery of C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. I'll come clean and admit I didn't even know about this, but have already ordered copies for my library. He was put on to it by one of our Latin teachers. Another student is part way through Neal Stephenson's Anathem. I gave this a shot last year and found it tough going. But another student had read it with a Physics teacher in our ReCreate Reading program last year. I was mostly proud to be sitting in a room with two people who successfully tackled this title. Anyway, conversation got on to the relationship between science and science fiction, if the literary cannon will include fantasy in the future -- since it dominates not only our fiction but many forms of contemporary entertainment these days -- and whether or not the Apollo 11 mission was the peak of scientific human endeavor. We all tend to leave these meetings feeling like there's so much more reading to do. But agree that if ever comes a time when there isn't will be the truly unhappy hour...

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

When I mention to folks that I just finished and loved Zeitoun by Dave Eggers I get a consistent response: "You mean you haven't read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius?" or "Isn't he the guy who wrote What is the What?"

Okay, yes, I have not read those books -- an omission I will rectify promptly -- but I did I mention that I just finished and loved Zeitoun? What an amazing story! Tragedy has a way of precipitating powerful writing and Katrina was no exception. Egger's Zeitoun recounts not the natural disaster but the ensuing human disaster that unfolded in the days immediately followed the levees' demise. Not to be missed!