Raven Summer

David Almond is an interesting writer. Since his last name begins with A I am acquainted with quite a few of his novels. (That’s right, I just keep reading.) Anyway, he writes these young adult novels that always have a small element of the fantastic in them- a fallen angel, a magic cave, or in this case, an abandoned baby. True, there isn’t anything that other-worldly about a baby lying around in a park, but the way everybody in the book acted, there was. This brings me to my only real problem with the book. It’s a good story and all, save the baby, boys grow up, yada yada yada, whatever. But these pre-teens are kids that are filled with such angst and drama that I just can’t really buy into anything that happens.

It’s probably just because I can’t relate to them. Apparently I had this carefree easy childhood and I just didn’t need to behave or speak or think the way these kids do. I mean, I don’t remember ever playing war games that escalated into somebody actually trying to kill one of the players. Sure, I remember playing war games; everybody did that. But we didn’t use real knives, and we didn’t end up stabbing each other. If somebody got a scratch from one of our sticks-that-was-a-fake-knife, it certainly wasn’t because our little pre-adolescent brains took a moment to process the complexities of whether or not actually killing our friend was a good idea. And we definitely didn’t do it with this really artful, multi-syllabic language that belongs in some enigmatic Oscar contender that no one understands.

My real question is: are kids really like this now? Do they wander around poetically designing in their own heads their own individual meaning of life? Do they find the skies so glamorous that they have to consider each cloud and what it might be speaking to them? Do they look at a tree and see a gallows, or imagine the butterflies woven together in a net that flutteringly smothers their enemies? Do they even have enemies?

Wait, I had enemies. There were bullies and such, sure, but I didn’t lay awake at night dreaming up new and creative ways to kill them. I was a kid! I just wanted them to quit making fun of my big nose! The most creative way I had of dealing with my “enemies” was learning what corner of the playground they hung out in and staying on the other side.

Don’t kids like bikes and dolls and video games and books anymore? I mean, really. How old am I that these silly John Hughes wannabes are so much older than I am? Because that’s how I feel when I read young adult books these days… there’s no kids anymore. There’s just a bunch of old souls wandering around in awkward bodies.

Rescuing babies.

And then murdering the bullies.

And then escaping to Nigeria.

Nigeria? I’m lost. This is crazy. Somebody bring me my Ramona, I need a break.

Five Skies

I hear, this is a good book. At least, reviews say it is, so it must be, because they say so. The problem is, I didn’t read this book, but listened to its recording instead. So what happens is, when an author reads his own book, it sounds really terrible. That’s because, an author is good at writing, and not so much at reading. So they have this terrible habit of reading, just a few words at a time, in order to make it very slow and clear, and easy to understand. What they don’t get is, when they pause, they just make our brains pause, and when they pick up in the middle of, the same phrase, we shake our head trying to figure out, what it was they said, and we miss most of the sentence.

Therefore, it is very difficult, to listen to an audio book, that is read by the author. It is sort of like reading paragraphs, that have commas stuck throughout the sentences, in weird and awkward places. Authors, take note. Leave the reading to the actors, and take the time you save, to write us something intelligible.

The Room and the Chair

To recap, when I want books from the library, I don’t go in search of a book. I go to the adult shelves, the young adult shelves, and the children’s shelves, start at A, and take home the first two or three books on each shelf that I haven’t read yet. I use pretty much no discernment except that I skip major fantasy in the adult section (because I find it forced and usually full of underlying moral “lessons”) and I’ve had enough of that one author who is just TERRIBLE (whose name I’m not going to mention because I think that might be mean and we all know I don’t want to be mean).

Well, I’ve given it a few tries, but I have officially knocked one more genre off my list of what I will read, and we have this book to thank for it. So: no more contemporary political/mystery/subtle-statement "thrillers". I thought perhaps I might eventually warm up to these newspapermen, army bigwigs, political underlings, and statesmen’s wives if I read enough of these books.

Nope. Sorry. Just couldn’t do it. Bored silly. Ain’t happening again.

Call me lazy, but if I just don’t care that much about politics in real life (hey, I research candidates, I vote, and I consider my part done) then why would I want to flood my imaginative life with them? I wouldn’t! These people bore and annoy and frustrate me on a daily basis. They flood the news and semi-intellectual conversations all around me. I don’t like it in my daily dealings and I don’t like them getting in the way of my reading enjoyment. So enough! No more politics in books! I’m not listening to their subliminal messages anyway! Bring me a nice unicorn and a clever caper by a kid named Zach, because that’s all I want when I read! Entertaaaaaaaaaaain me!!

Oh, so about this book (yeah, I forgot)- it’s one of those that has about ten major characters and the scene cuts from character to character to follow their part of the unfolding story. I didn’t really like any of the characters and I certainly didn’t care about the unfolding story (secrets in DC, of course), so I just kept skipping around to the parts that were following the only character I found interesting, which was the opening USAF pilot who ended up in a tree. That was sort of interesting. Then one of her friends died when they all went AWOL for sledding in Afghanistan or something like that… semi-interesting… and then I’m pretty sure she ended up dying. In this room. With a chair.

Not sure. Didn’t care.

Heyday

So here’s the thing about this book. I have no idea what it was about. Wait, I remember what it was about. It was about something… something… uh, think it was early America or something like that, maybe these people were early Americans, or maybe they came from Europe, possibly Americans in Europe who came back to America, I really can’t remember. It’s, oh, wait, it was gold rush time! I remember that. They wanted gold. I think they panned for it. No, they dug for it. No, they panned. They definitely panned. Yeah, that’s it. I’m sure of that. And they made their own little community, some sort of Utopia-commune-thing, but that was after mostly everybody died. And then I think everybody else died. Maybe not the last person. Uh, somebody had to live, right… somebody was telling the story… no, that was just an omniscient narrator, never mind. Everybody died.

So just to clarify, I hated this book. It was ridiculous. It was silly. It was stupid. I will give the author kudos for one thing, however. He really did his research on the time period. He definitely knew who all the major players at the time were. In fact, he knew them so well that he made sure his main characters ran into each and every one of them. Never (since Forrest Gump) have I met an entire cast of characters that was so lucky as to run into every famous contemporary on the globe. (And just for the record, Forrest Gump did it better.) Don’t believe me? Here’s a short and incomplete list of mid-century celebrities that our heroes (who all die, I don’t even feel guilty about spoiling that) encounter:

1. Charles Darwin (who apparently suffers from a severe case of indifferent flatulence)
2. Mr. Proctor (of Proctor and Gamble fame)
3. Cassius Clay (the first one)
4. Robert E. Lee (20 years before the war)
5. Stephen Foster (who conveniently hears them mention something about coming around the mountain)
6. John Deere (really?)
7. Noah Donner (a convenient survivor)
8. Joseph Smith
9. John Jacob Astor (thought he drowned)
10. William Tecumseh Sherman (I repeat… really?)
11. Prince Albert (sigh)
12. Brigham Young
13. Edgar Allen Poe (who initialized the Big Bang theory, did you know?)
14. Kit Carson
15. Allan Pinkerton
16. Horace Greely
17. John Charles Fremont
18. Abraham Lincoln (yep, just hanging out in a bar)
19. William Herndon (sharing a drink)
20. Charles Dickens
21. Walt Whitman
22. Alexis D. Toqueville
23. James Sheridan Knowles (look him up)

…And that’s all I can remember off the top of my head, and let’s all remember one thing: I have a very bad memory. So my hat’s off to the author. Congratulations on elevating your ridiculous, time-wasting story into a completely unbelievable piece of tripe. I look forward to ignoring your next literary installment. But not really.

The Accidental Adventures of India McAllister

This book came from one of my library-dash-to-all-the-shelves-and-grab-the-first-book-I-see trips. It's a kids' book that was sort of fun to read, but it surprised me a little bit. See, I grew up reading about Peter Rabbit and Ramona Quimby, who taught me such essentials as not to steal from my neighbor's farm and that toothpaste should remain in the tube until I'm ready to use it. This book was a little different. It introduced us to India (who was named after the ink, not the country, by her bohemian artist mother) and her (as we would call it in the Midwest) non-traditional family and lifestyle. So we've got the artsy mom (who leaves India to fend for herself when she's in the middle of a painting jag), the long-distance dad (whose new boyfriend makes India a little uncomfortable because of his Swedish accent), the boy who's her best friend (Ramona never got jealous when her friend Howie played with other girls) and the myriad of schoolmates and neighbors that make up her topsy-turvy life. Aw, that's sweet.

Hey, whatever, it was cute. It was just quite a far cry from the books I read when I was a kid where the most dramatic thing that happened was the kids got caught out in the rain while playing with their tin-can stilts- so it was sort of sad for me to realize just how far behind the times I really am. God save my poor children if I ever have any- they'll be stuck reading things like The Babysitters Club and Sleepover Friends and will miss out completely on all the enlightened books they could be checking out that would help them understand this new world we live in...