Team Brennan

Team Human
by Sarah Reese Brennan

Another teen vampire zombie novel?  Uh, huh.

This one escaped the triple stigma of been there, done that, and not again!  due to the charming humor of the writing and the honesty of the emotions depicted.  Even though they were teenage emotions--violently passionate, overwrought and out of control--they were real enough to raise a hint of moisture in the farthest corner of my left eye.

It's pretty funny, too.   I'd actually consider reading a second one by the author, if she's done one.  The characters are cool.

Football and life

The Off Season

by Catherine Gilbert Murdock 
 


Like, wow!  In some ways better than Dairy Queen.  I wish the heroine had learned a few more lessons from her experiences in the first book, but who ever does?

 She's grown up a little--that's clear--but there are always a couple of things you have to learn over and over before you get them down.  Like talking to people.  And admitting you screwed up royally instead of hiding under the covers and hoping the icky stuff will just go away.

Ms. Murdock is dealing with some serious human emotions here, so don't expect to get through it dry eyed.  And don't expect to learn much about football--she mercifully skips over the intricate details and just assumes you're a football fan too and you'll "get it" without much explanation.

Well, I didn't get any of the football references.  But I can attest that you don't have to in order to enjoy this series.

Funny and forgettable

The Exiles by Hilary McKay Makes me wonder if Ms. McKay made a bet with her children, something on the order of "you can too live without books," and she wrote this book as an I told you so

It's sweet and funny and very suitable for the kid audience who don't have their heads full of superheroes and smash-em-up video games. I didn't fall in love with it like I did the Caisson family series, Saffy's Angel and etc. Those kids were so different you could tell who was speaking just by the words and tone--these kids sort of blend together and don't jump out as individuals. Listening to the audiobook might have helped with that--maybe I'm a lazy reader.

Two centuries of #!&%*&#

For Her Own Good:
Two Centuries of the Experts' Advice to Women

by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English

This turned out to be a dense, scholarly book.  I enjoyed it immensely, but I'm not enough of an expert to comment on it.  I think it's sound, quite sound.  Some of the theories may lack support, but I took them as theories, not conclusions, and so was not perturbed.

I especially appreciated the author's determination to refrain from making snarky comments about the aburd, ridiculous or downright hateful nature of the experts' advice.  Ninety-nine point nine percent of it was pure bullshit--in a cultural context.  Losing the race to the moon?  Our children needed more discipline to grow up to be engineers.  Or...

First--as she outgrew her girlhood--a woman had to renounce the pleasures of the clitoris and transfer all sexual feeling to the vagina. [...] When a woman accomplished the task of renouncing the clitoris, she symbolically set aside all masculine strivings (penis envy) and accepted a life of passivity.

That definition of the woman's role--passivity, lack of pleasure except in service to others--resulted in the ultimate stupid theory of all stupid theories:  women were inherently masochists, and menial labor and sexual humiliations were what it took to make her truly happy.
The authors did remark, at that point:
(The explanation of "masochism" is so convenient and totalistic that we can only wonder why the psychomedical experts didn't think to extend it to other groups, like the poor and racial minorities.)
I'll let 'em have that one.  How can you not get a little snippy in the face of so much well-meaning (or ill-meaning) stupidity?

Short trip over the pond

Diary of a Provincial Lady
by E.M. Delafield

Lovely little funny, apparently published as a "real" diary since it's in the non-fiction section at the library.  All entries are highly tongue-in-cheek, written by a not-at-all rich but aristocratically not poor, wife and mother in a small English country house in the late 1920's.  Our lady appears to be an excellent mom, which endears her to me, as well as an aspiring author who tries to move in "literary circles" without taking time away from her household management, her clueless and boring husband, and her bulbs.  Yes, bulbs, as in flowers forced indoors into premature bloom.  It appears to be a peer pressure challenge--something everybody does if they want to be "in."

Her writing will always make you smile, sometimes even laugh.  For example, a friend lures her to the beach and they attempt swimming to an "immense and distant rock"

...Long before we are halfway there, I know that I shall never reach it, and hope that Robert's second wife will be kind to the children.  Viscountess, swimming calmly, says, Am I all right?  I reply, Oh quite, and am immediately submerged.
Continue to swim.  Rock moves further and further away.  I reflect that there will be something distinguished about the headlines announcing my demise in such exalted company, and mentally frame one or two that I think would look well in local paper.

Strong stuff

A Raisin in the Sun
a play by Lorraine Hansberry

I think it's possible I read this a long time ago, but I'd forgotten all the details so the players were new to me.  Only the ending seemed familiar.

The cover blurb compared it to three other great American plays, rating it equal to them, but I'd rate it better if I'd read them all--Death of a Salesman, Long Day's Journey into Night, and The Glass Menagerie.  This one has a strong, positive ending.  Not fairy tale, but a chance of some real happiness at last.  The odds were against these guys, but there's room to hope.