Tag: the52bookchallenge

Dystopia, Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult

Number 41: Involves a Second Chance

KC

The Program

Suzanne Young

In this book’s defense, it was going to feel dated.

After all, The Program is a dystopian young adult novel set in Oregon with an exciting premise that, predictably, fails to deliver.

To start with the good, the writing is clear, several of the characters are engaging, and the author is particularly good at depicting action. The plot moves along quickly, and I could be curious to see where the series goes.

Okay good parts over, complaining parts ahead.

To begin, wow. Just, wow, were we ever pick-mes back then. This book is that mentality in 405 easy-to-read pages. It is peak Mary Sue, peak not-like-other-girls. It’s hard to be reminded of that cultural moment. And in book form, no less! I was certain one of my complaints was going to be this book’s abject failure to pass the Bechdel test, but the first page proved me wrong.

The air in the room tastes sterile. The lingering scent of bleach is mixing with the fresh white paint on the walls, and I wish my teacher would open the window to let in a breeze. But we’re on the third floor so the pane is sealed shut- just in case anyone gets the urge to jump.

I’m still staring at the paper on my desk when Kendra Phillips turns around in her seat, looking me over with her purple contacts. “You’re not done yet?”

Like most heroines of the era, Sloane is beloved by men, inexplicably liked by women (who are underdeveloped compared to the male characters), and totally incapable of relating to anyone who is not in love with her. It is possible this was relatable to teenagers in the Obama years, but teens today are more sophisticated than that.

Like many premises of the era, The Program is underdeveloped, and insensitive by today’s standards. To state the obvious: depression as a plot device is icky. Mental healthcare in America is a travesty. Conflating suicidal ideation, depression, and self-harm as being one and the same (which this book does frequently) is lazy writing. This may have been okay in 2012, but we can do better now.

Aside from being insensitive, it is underdeveloped. We don’t really understand why suicide has become contagious, why it is an epidemic, or why it seems localized to teenagers. Although this vagueness can work for stories that are more about the character’s journey than the setting itself, this book is very much about the Program as a character, and one girl’s journey not to be changed by it. In a very real sense, the Program functions as the villain, and it is a poorly understood one.

Which is all a bummer. I like dystopian novels. It’s a pity this one was not done well.

I glance past her to make sure Mrs. Portman is distracted at the front of the room, and then I smile. “It’s far too early in the morning to properly pyschoanalyze myself,” I whisper. “I’d almost rather learn about science.”

“Maybe a coffee spiked with QuikDeath would help you focus on the pain.”

Anthology, Financial, Nonfiction

Number 44: An Anthology

KC

Women Talk Money: Breaking the Taboo

Rebecca Walker

This is one of those books that you know from the beginning is going to get you. Anytime you have a group of diverse individuals sharing their honest feelings on one of society’s biggest taboos, at least one of them is going to hit a little too close to home and give you too many feelings. And that certainly happened with Women Talk Money. There were parts that were emotional, parts that were maddening, and a few sections that made me uncomfortably aware of aspects of my privilege I never even considered.

It was motivating, and reminded me that radical honesty about finances is necessary. The only way forward is to lift the veil of shame and secrecy until we understand how to do better.

I will definitely be looking into these writers in the future.

We tell ourselves so many stories about money; that it is the reward for our hard work, that is signals what is valuable, that it cannot buy things that will give our lives meaning, that we will never have equality until women assess their worth in the same ways men do. But none of these stories feel completely true to me.

P.S. I would be remiss not to mention that Rebecca Walker is the daughter of Alice Walker, whose essay is featured as the foreword of this book. While Alice Walker has done admirable work, her anti-Semitic views are, to say the least, problematic, and I cannot blame anyone for passing on anthology for that reason.

This world and these rooms might not have been designed for you, but you have to walk into the room and take the knowledge you need. Walk out with it. Don’t take anything else home.

Biography, Memoir, Nonfiction

Number 3: Title starting with the letter “E”

KC

Eve’s Hollywood

Eve Babitz

Words cannot express how much I love this collection. I read it every year and I always find something new to appreciate about it. Eve Babitz is commonly compared to Joan Didion, but I never understood it. In my opinion she is much more in line with Edith Wharton and Candace Bushnell, women who wrote savagely and frivolously, like pink stilettos, which is my favorite kind of writing. The difference being that they wrote about New York, and she wrote about L.A.

In the Depression, when most of them came here, people with brains went to New York and people with faces came West.

Of all her books, Slow Days Fast Company is probably her best, the most polished and to the point, but I like the messiness of Eve’s Hollywood. It feels like being 22 and sitting by the pool with your best friend over mojitos. Although I am originally from LA county, I did not appreciate the beauty of it while I was growing up, but I did after I read this book. It makes me homesick in the best possible way.

Culturally, L.A. has always been a humid jungle alive with seething L.A. projects that I guess people from other places just can’t see. It takes a certain kind of innocence to like L.A., anyway. It requires a certain plain happiness inside to be happy in L.A., to choose it and be happy here. When people are not happy, they fight against L.A. and say it’s a ‘wasteland’ and other helpful descriptions.

Bodice Ripper, Fiction, gothic romance, Historical Romance

Number 11: A Book With Less Than 2022 Goodreads Ratings

KC

The Demon Lover

Victoria Holt

I have a confession to make…

I could not finish this one.

I tried! After all, I take this challenge very seriously. I made a commitment. I will read two books a week until the end of 2022 if it turns my eye sockets to mush. If my apartment is on fire and my car rolls off a cliff, I will still read two books a week and report it here.

I mean, it was touch-and-go when I discovered the long-running Bravo classic Shahs of Sunset, which had nine glorious seasons to catch up on. But I am nothing if not ruthless in my binge-watching, and I am now caught up. So, I am back to the 52 Book Challenge like the book-challenge-blogger I aspire to be!

But I only read about halfway through this one because the content was… not great.

There was a lot to love about it. The setting was idyllic, the characters were sociopathic, the romantic lead was also named Kate. So far so good. After all, historical fiction is my genre, and while this was set in the regency era, it felt exactly like a time machine to the 1980s.

Tragically, the ’80s are a dated decade and nothing about them feels more dated than the way they talked about date rape.

So it was not a shock that the rape scene happened. In the context of its era, it was even rather demure. We don’t read the act itself as it was happening (thank you baby Jesus). Instead, the author mercifully treated the reader to a fade-to-black scene with all the scary bits cut out.

For that I thank her.

However, I am a finicky reader, and I have no tolerance for sexual violence. Even when it is absolutely necessary to the plot (and it’s rarely as necessary as writers seem to think), I spend the entirety of those scenes annoyed and wondering why. Why it is always so necessary to so many plots? Do we live in a world where with so many stories about people being violated?

Surely there are other forms of character development out there.

So I did not finish. Moving on!

To anyone who did manage to finish this book, send me an email. How did the whole romance turn out? Is there any way those crazy kids got a happy ending?

Biography, Nonfiction, True Crime

Number 26: Has an “Author’s Note”

KC

The Santa Claus Man: The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the Invention of Christmas in New York

Alex Palmer

The Santa Claus Man covers the same period of time that Edith Wharton skewered so brilliantly in fiction, but it’s even more disquieting because it was real, and I loved it as much as I love all Gilded Age tales. The New York this book describes is a utopia where children’s letters to Santa are always answered and Boy Scouts keep American manhood alive.

But, of course, this was a fantasy. The American experiment has always had duplicity, even in our most cherished institutions. I won’t look at Christmas the same way after reading this, but I do appreciate it more.

Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Fiction, Young Adult

Number 35: From the Villain’s Perspective

KC

A Villains Collection (Villains #1-3)

By Serena Valentino

I realized about a third of the way into this ebook that what I borrowed was actually the first three books in a series, not a standalone novel featuring my favorite villains. Of course by that point I was emotionally invested, and too lazy to download three separate ebooks, so I powered through, and I am glad I did.

My favorite so far is the third one, Poor Unfortunate Soul, the tale of Ursula from Little Mermaid. This story is the bleakest and most nihilistic of the three, but it also seems to be the point in the trilogy where Serena Valentino found her writing groove. The hopelessness of Ursula’s pain and rage fit the tone of the original Hans Christian Andersen story better than Disney usually allows, and it is the first of the Villains novels that felt like it delivered on its promise.

I cannot wait to read more!

Poetry

Number 23: Author with an X, Y, or Z in their name

KC

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Omar Khayyám, Edward FitzGerald (Translator)

I enjoyed this one so much more than I expected! Poetry can be difficult to get through, but this is a delightful little ode to coping with the fear of nihilism through sheer, unbridled hedonism. And with versus like this, how can you resist?

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,

Before we too into the Dust descend;

Dust into Dust, and under Dust to lie,

Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer, and – sans End!

It gives me chills. But it’s not all wine, gin gets a mention.

Oh Thou who didst with Pitfall and with Gin

Beset the Road I was to wander in,

Thou wilt not with Predestination round

Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?

But it’s mostly wine.

And lately, by the Tavern Door agape,

Came stealing through the Dusk an Angel Shape,

Bearing a vessel on his Shoulder; and

He bid me taste of it; and ’twas- the Grape!

I will be borrowing from it the next time I need to give a toast.

Memoir, Nonfiction, Pop Culture

Number 17: A Book Picked Based on its Spine

KC

The 2000s Made Me Gay: Essays on Pop Culture

Grace Perry

The category for this was obvious. This was the book that I picked based on its spine. I grew up in the 2000s, and I have so much nostalgia for the time it is a wonder I have space in my brain for anything else. This book did not disappoint! Grace Perry is awesome, and I would like to listen to her thoughts forever.

And now, a montage of the various pop culture this book made me miss:

What came first, the overeager collegiate dyke desperate for affection or the Banter Boy… was I mirroring him or relating to him?

So, that’s when I became a girl. At a time where gender-bending was encouraged and celebrated, but homophobia still reigned.

What a decade it was! Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some movies to rewatch.

Financial, Investing, Memoir, Nonfiction

Number 10: A Book Based on A Real Person

KC

Invest Like a Shark: How a Deaf Guy with No Job and Limited Capital Made a Fortune Investing in the Stock Market

by James DePorre

Invest Like a Shark is a book on investing that dates back to 2007. I specifically picked it for this fact because 2007 seems like a lifetime ago. Since then, there has been a recession and a pandemic, the near-domination of the tech industry, and the introduction of cryptocurrency, so I was genuinely curious how dated this book would feel.

The answer is, not very.

Since this is a story of one man’s investment strategy, it is heavy on theory, but not as heavy on the mechanics of actually trading stock. In terms of investing metaphors, it is less egregious than some I have ready, but I am not a person who does well using with heavy visual metaphors to explain abstract concepts, so my memory of the book looks something like this:

Photo by Harrison Haines on Pexels.com
Photo by adiprayogo liemena on Pexels.com
Photo by Vova Krasilnikov on Pexels.com

Also, there is a forward by Jim Cramer, so you can’t say you don’t know what you’re getting into.

Fiction, gothic romance, Historical Romance, Romance

Number 15: A Five-Syllable Title

KC

My Cousin Rachel

By Daphne du Maurier

When I picked up this novel in the early days of 2020, my impression was “wow, this book seemed right up my alley: gothic romance, brooding heroes, moral ambiguity. What’s not to love?”

Perhaps she was two persons, torn in two, first one having way and then the other.

And love it I did, right up until March of 2020, when I was about a third of the way done. At this point in time, I was working long hours in a cubicle at my corporate job and living in a wonderfully creepy cabin down a dirt road in the country. It was a perfect setting for a slow read full of meditations on good and evil, love and betrayal.

But then the pandemic forced us into our homes for over a year, and I traded the cabin in the country for an apartment in the city, and the idea of life on a manor suddenly seemed too claustrophobic for my tastes.

So I put it down and did not pick it up again until I decided to do this challenge. To give myself a head start on reading two books a week for the next six months, I cheated a little (shhhhh), and decided to go with a book I already started.

Once again, this book did not resonate with me.

My tutor… told us once that truth was something intangible, unseen, which sometimes we stumbled upon and did not recognise…

In all likelihood, it just has not aged well. When My Cousin Rachel was written, people had longer attention spans, and the anti-hero was a less common trope. This book has phenomenal writing, but what made it unique at the time has been done countless times since then. Overall it was a good read, but it felt too familiar to be groundbreaking.