CBRIII Book 4: Matched by Ally Condie

If there's anything that's evident from my CBR last year, it's that I have no qualms about reading YA novels. In fact, reflecting upon everything I've read in the last 10 years since I turned 18 and became an adult (at least legally), some of the best novels I've read have been YA - the Hunger Games trilogy, His Dark Materials trilogy, and, of course, the Harry Potter series. So when I heard about a new novel called "Matched" that appeared to be in the future dystopia vein like the Hunger Games, I couldn't resist.

Cassia Reyes lives in the Society, a totalitarian state. The author is pretty vague about the Society, not mentioning where it is located (there are provinces that are named, but no countries) or how it came to be. All we're told is that it exists, it controls the lives of its people in order to give them long-lasting lives free of struggle or problems, and it values adherence to strict rules above all. Cassia's whole life is monitored, from how she performs in school to how she works out on a treadmill at home to how she works as a "sorter," and this data is compiled and used to plan out her life - what job she will be assigned, where she will live, and who she will marry. Her entire life is controlled right down to her possessions - she is allowed one "artifact," an item from a time before the Society existed. In her case, she has a golden compact handed down to her from her Grandmother. Even her meals are controlled - all citizens are given specially-delivered meals that have been nutritionally-balanced for each specific person, in order to make sure they are as healthy as can be.

At the beginning of the story, Cassia is on her way to her Matching banquet, at which she and dozens of other teens will be introduced to their future mates. When it is her turn, she is surprised to learn that her future husband will be none other than her lifelong friend Xander. Xander and Cassia are given special microcards to read on their "ports" (computers) at home that will tell them all about what to expect now that they are Matched. Cassia returns home and excitedly puts the card into the port, expecting to see all she needs to know about Xander. But instead, a completely different face flashes on her screen and then it goes black. Cassia is stunned - could the Society have made a mistake? Was she given the wrong Match?

Matched follows the basic storyline of a person in a so-called "perfect" society who slowly begins to realize that things aren't as they seem. After she sees the other face, which happens to be that of another friend, Ky (not a spoiler to mention this), she begins to question what the Society really is doing by controlling its citizens lives. By taking away their ability to make choices, is the Society helping them or hurting them? And why did she see Ky's face - what is the explanation for that?

While the story does unfold in a somewhat predictable way, I was thrown a bit by the reasoning behind the microcard error. I won't spoil it here, but I will just say that I thought the author was going one route with it and the explanation given was not what I was expecting. Overall, the story is entertaining, but frustratingly vague. I wanted to know more about the Society, but the story is definitely more about Cassia's awakening and, of course, her love life, since she's torn between two boys. Still, the author leaves the ending open for another book, and if there is a sequel, I will pick it up to see what happens next.

CBRIII Book 3: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Middlesex is a sprawling coming-of-age tale of Cal Stephanides, a Greek-American who was born and raised in Detroit in the 1960s. That's the simplest description of the book that I can come up with. But there's more to the novel, and more to the protagonist as well: Cal is a hermaphrodite (this isn't spoiling anything to mention it) who was raised as a girl named Callie. In order to tell his life story, Cal has to start at the very beginning - when his grandparents Lefty and Desdemona fled Smyrna in the 1920s to start a new life in America (while guarding a dark secret). His story continues with his parents Tessie and Milton and their struggles to conceive a daughter, which leads to his own story of growing up and trying to figure out exactly who and what he is.

It's going to be hard to discuss this book without mentioning more specific details. So I'm going to go ahead and state that if you have not read it, be warned: spoilers abound from here on.

Anyway...

I could not put this book down. That's the highest praise I can give for any book - well, that and the fact that phrases from it have stuck with me. Eugenides takes a fascinating subject - hermaphroditism - and sets it in a fully-fleshed-out world of Greek immigrants and middle class Detroit denizens. The book could have easily veered into "freak-of-the-week" territory, but Eugenides avoids that by making Cal a very realistic character. You feel his sense of wonder as he ponders about his grandparents - about the choice they made and the repercussions of that choice that echo down the generations in Cal's very genes.

And that choice I mention is, of course, their decision to hide the fact that they are brother and sister. They marry and begin a family together, despite Desdemona's fears that their children will be punished for their sin. I've always been fascinated by moral quandaries - what keeps someone from doing something that's wrong or bad? In this case, Lefty & his wife were tempted by the fact that no one would ever know the truth.

Like I said, the book is more than just a coming-of-age tale. It presents a good depiction of the life of immigrants in the early 20th century, and it frames the story of the Stephanides family in the story of the rise and fall of Detroit. But beyond all of that, i's also a discussion of nature vs. nurture. Obviously, genetics plays a major role in Cal's intersexed condition. (I don't think "condition" is the right word I'm looking for, but I'm at a loss.) But nurture is very important too. Cal was raised as a girl, and he faces a tough decision - does he ignore everything that science would tell him and continue as Callie, or does he embrace his genetic destiny at the cost of changing everything he's ever known?

My one qualm with the book would be the revelation of Lefty and Desdemona's incest. It's implied that this is the reason for the genetic anomaly that causes Cal's hermaphroditism, which makes it a big deal, in my opinion. I was expecting a big dramatic scene where Desdemona confesses her secret to the family, but she only mentions it to Cal, and it's revealed and then dropped over a few paragraphs. But maybe I missed the point of it all. Maybe that was what Eugenides was trying to say - that in the end, it wasn't very important because it wasn't the only influence in Cal's life - he wasn't bound to his genetic destiny any more than his grandmother was bound to her shameful secret. He was free to live his life as he chose, no matter what his karyotype might say. Or maybe I'm finding answers that aren't really there. Either way, I think that Cal's story is going to stay with me for a while.

CBR III Book 2: I Am Legend and Other Stories by Richard Matheson

Everyone is familiar with Richard Matheson's best known work, "I Am Legend." It's the subject of three different movies, each a slightly different take on the story of the last man alive after the rest of the world has been turned into monsters. Reading the original tale, it's no wonder so many people have wanted to bring it to the big screen. It's an excellent tale of one man's lonely struggle to remain sane while the monsters outside cry for his blood.

Matheson's writing is dark and forboding, and he's fond of twists, so it's no wonder he used to write for the Twilight Zone series. The second half of this book is a collection of his short stories. Two in particular stand out in my memory: "Mad House," in which a man's anger at his deteriorating marriage and stalled career has an unexpected effect on his home; and "Person to Person," the last story in the collection. In "Person to Person," a man wakes one night to hear a phone ringing in his own head. He finally answers it, only to have another voice speak to him. Who is it? Is it really a man who claims to work for the government running an experiment, or is it something more sinister and close to home?

I really enjoyed reading Matheson's short stories. I might have to seek out his other works. It's easy to see his influence now in Stephen King's work. I recommend him to anyone looking for some good old fashioned horror.

CBR III Book 1: Stiff: the Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach

Death is an inevitability that most of us prefer not to dwell upon. Even less pleasant to consider is what to do with the remains of the deceased. It is this subject that Mary Roach decided to research and write about with her usual wit in her novel "Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers." Roach, never one to shy away from the weird or unpleasant, brings her dark sense of humor to a topic that covers everything from the typical ways of dealing with corpses - burying or cremating - to donating your remains to science, medicine, or the military, to other more interesting and lesser known options - such as composting or dissolving the remains in lye.

I had no idea there were so many choices for what to do with your body after you've passed on. I knew the obvious choices - be buried/cremated or donate your remains - but beyond that, I knew very little. Roach not only discusses all the different ways corpses can be handled, she delves into the history of how we've handled our dead, and looks to how it may change in the future. One current option that is gaining traction in Sweden is composting cadavers. People who choose this path would be used to help a ceremonial tree or bush planted in their honor to grow. Frankly, I think that's a lovely idea, and in this day of growing environmental concerns, who wouldn't want to go on helping the earth after they're gone? Of course, ideas like that are only beginning to bud (sorry) - as a species we're still fairly uneasy about death and handling corpses. We still have far to go before such an option becomes widely accepted. Roach encourages her readers to think about what to do with their own bodies, and I like the idea of donating myself to science, in the hopes that someone might be able to use me to help others.

CR Book 27: Rampant by Diana Peterfreund

My final entry in this year's CR (it ends in November, right?) was crap. Utter crap.

So... I was drawn to this book after I heard the basic premise. Two words: "Killer unicorns."

Sounds awesome, right?

Astrid Llewelyn is a sixteen year old girl who dreams of becoming a doctor. She's a typical teen girl, caustically sarcastic, constantly fending off her boyfriend's advances and fighting with her mother. She and her mother Lilith don't see eye to eye on most things, the biggest of which is her mom's firm belief in the existence of unicorns. But these aren't your typical, fluffy, friendly unicorns, the kind you might see Robocop riding. No, these are the venomous, snarling, bloodthirsty beasts Robocop probably wishes he could ride. And according to Lilith, Astrid is descended from an Order of unicorn hunters known as the Order of the Lioness, which extends back to Alexander the Great's descendants. Astrid, naturally, believes her mother is loopy and that unicorns are mythical.

Then, one night, as Astrid is trying to keep her boyfriend out of her pants, they're attacked by a wild unicorn. Astrid calls her mother in a panic after the boy is mortally wounded, and Lilith arrives with something called "the Remedy," which is somehow extracted from unicorns and has magically healing abilities. Not long after the attack, Lilith informs Astrid that the unicorns are reemerging, and the Order must stand once more to fight... which means Astrid will be moving to Rome post-haste to live in a Cloister and train to be a hunter.

Yup, a Cloister. Because only virgin girls can fight unicorns. They are drawn to the girls because the girls possess a "potentia illicere," which the author never bothered to explain and my Google-fu tells me that it roughly translates to "alluring power." So, magic. Or whatever. Unicorns like 'em pure, apparently.

So Astrid goes to Rome, meets the other virgins who have been sent to the Cloister, and tries to amp herself up to devote herself to fighting unicorns. It's not as easy as it sounds, though, as unicorns possess super healing abilities - you basically have to cut off their heads or cut out their hearts to get them to die. And Astrid feels like her mother has forced her into this life, which she basically has, and tries to find a way out. The most obvious way? Lose her virginity. Enter Giovanni, an American going to school in Rome. Will Astrid give in to temptation? Or will she stay true to her calling and protect the world from the scary horsies?

Should you even care? Not really.

My first gut reaction to reading this book was, Look, another lame attempt to cash in on the supernatural craze kicked off by Twilight! Seriously. I think when Stephanie Meyer finished her last novel, she created this vortex of Suck that could only be filled by more Suck, and that's how this book ended up getting published. This one WAS published in 2009, but who knows, maybe it was kicking around before Twilight hit the presses.

Look, I'll be honest. I really wanted this book to be one of those so-bad-it's-good novels. But it's not. It's just BAD. Astrid is insufferable (rather like whiny Bella); she bitches and moans about everything. The unicorn stuff needed to be totally balls-out crazy, and the creatures needed to be terrifyingly scary, but the author kept undercutting their fearsomeness, like by giving the girls a pet unicorn named Bonegrinder who sounded rather adorable. The book kept forgetting its own rules and tripping up over details. For instance, regular people (aka not hunters) can't see unicorns because they're unable to see magical things. But then Giovanni is able to see them and it's never really addressed why he can or why the Don of the Cloister can as well. And then there's a whole subplot about the Remedy that goes nowhere until it's conveniently mentioned again at the end of the book, perhaps setting up a sequel (oh let's hope not).

I don't think this one is going to catch on like Twilight did. I just don't think the world wants scary unicorns. And I can't blame them. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a book to donate to Goodwill.

CR Book 26: House of Leaves by Mark. Z. Danielewski

Well, I've achieved my goal of a half Cannonball Read. Not that I'm going to stop reading, but at least I've reached that point.

"House of Leaves" is a sprawling, audacious story within a story within a story... I think I hit all the levels there... that describes a documentary called The Navison Record. Will and Karen Navison have moved their small family into a house in the Virginia countryside and make an odd discovery: the house is larger on the inside than on the outside. Curious about this physical impossibility, Will (referred to as Navison or Navy by friends) brings in friends and family to help him determine how this could be. But the house is not finished playing with its inhabitants; doorways begin to appear in walls where nothing stood before, and soon a full hallway appears in their living room. Navison, a photojournalist who has never been afraid to explore and to capture his findings in film, decides to travel the hallway with the help of some well-know explorers and lots and lots of video cameras.

That's just the first story. On top of that, we have the work of Zampano, a blind man who has spent what would appear to be years compiling notes and references about The Navison Record. And on top of that, we have the footnotes (that tell the life story) of Johnny Truant, a loquacious ne'er-do-well who spends his days working in a tattoo parlor, dreaming of a stripper named Thumper, and his nights getting drunk with his friend, Lude, and charming drunk women with his ability to spin a good yarn. One night, Lude brings Johnny over to check out the deceased Zampano's (Lude's neighbor) apartment, and Johnny finds a trunk full of Zampano's work and decides to take it home.

Johnny's curiosity about the man's work quickly becomes an obsession, and as he tries to finish what Zampano started, his life begins to collapse around him. The shifts in his mental state appear to mirror the changes occurring in the Navison Record. One of the most impressive things about the novel is the way Danielewski plays with structure in order to give you the impression that the book itself is changing, just like the house. As Johnny's life begins to disintegrate, the footnotes become more chaotic; as Navy's explorations of the hallway begin to resemble that of someone wandering a labyrinth, so too do the words on the pages begin to change, moving backwards, upside-down, and so on. As you read, you feel just as lost and confused as Navy and Johnny (and I would assume Zampano, but I didn't get as strong a sense of him as I did the others).

The book is filled with Appendices and Exhibits that are full of poems, images, and extra bits meant to help support (or, in some cases, contradict) the work Zampano did on the Navison Record. But the most interesting addition would be the section titled "The Three Attic Whalestoe Institute Letters," a series of letters from Johnny's mother that not only shed some light on his life, but IMO throw the whole veracity of everything into serious question. After all, Johnny tells us over and over in his footnotes that he's a fantastic storyteller; and he himself states that he's never found any record of The Navison Record even existing (as he states in the introduction); who's to say he didn't just make it all up?

If you go to houseofleaves.com, you'll find a whole message board devoted to puzzling out the truth behind this mazelike novel. I personally will be rereading this novel... not soon, but I know that I will be revisiting it. I might try to read it a different way next time - ignoring Johnny's footnotes altogether, then go back and read those alone. There's a lot to think about with this one; but no guaranteed answers. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but I'm ok with not having clear answers. It's the journey, the experience of reading it, that's important with this book.

I've heard this called a horror novel, and that seems a bit misleading, but I can understand how it got that label. I myself actually got spooked enough that I had a nightmare and spent a sleepless night warding off bad dreams. Johnny talks of something lurking in the darkness, and, well, Danielewski creates a very realistic sense of dread that was enough to make me stop reading the book at night. But if you're looking for outright gore and scares, you won't find them here. This book is more about the empty spaces, the darkness in our lives, and what that means.

Book 25: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

*Mild SPOILERS for those who've not read the series*

Mockingjay is the third and final book in the Hunger Games series. The series tells the story of Katniss Everdeen of District 12 who is chosen to fight for her life in the annual Hunger Games in book 1, and again in the Quarter Quell in Book 2. At the end of the second book, Katniss is whisked away by the rebels who quickly tell her that a) District 13 exists and is fighting the Capitol and b) the Capitol has Peeta, her fellow tribute from District 12 and one of two men she cares deeply about... maybe even loves.

Book 3 begins with Katniss recovering from the Quell and trying to absorb all the info being thrown at her by the rebels. She and her family, and her friend Gale, the other important man in her life, are residing in the underground District 13. Katniss is asked by the rebels to become their Mockingjay: the face of the resistance, meant to rally support for the fight against the Capitol. But Katniss is unsure that she wants such an important role. One thing she is certain of is that Peeta is being kept and tortured by President Snow, the leader of Panem, and that she herself wants to kill Snow for what he's done to Peeta and to her through the Games. So she makes a deal with President Coin, leader of District 13 and the rebels: she'll be their Mockingjay in exchange for being the one to assassinate Snow. But before she can get to the President's Mansion in the Capitol, she'll have to help to bring all the Districts under rebel control and then bring the Capitol down.

Short summary, I know, but I don't want to spoil too much. I will say that, just as in the final book of the Potter series, the death count piles up right from the beginning. And the torture used on Peeta is pretty horrifying. Those expecting a big final showdown between Gale and Peeta over Katniss's affections will be disappointed, but I thought that things ended as they should. (But I could be called a fangirl, so I'm biased.)

One of the ways the rebels try to rally support is through their use of propaganda films they call "propos." They have a camera crew, complete with makeup artists and a director, who follow Katniss around the districts as she interacts with the wounded or fight the Capitol's helicopters. It reminded me a lot of that movie Wag the Dog, where a US president commissions a director to stage a war in order to divert attention from some wrongdoing he did. In Mockingjay, the war is very real, but the staging sometimes isn't, and it's interesting to see Katniss just accept that instead of protesting. She understands that the people of Panem are always "tuned in," as it is; the Hunger Games are mandatory broadcasts, after all. And what is the war against the Capitol but one big Game itself?

Out of the three books, I'd say this one was the weakest, but the first two set the bar pretty high. Overall, I really enjoyed this book. I devoured it in two days, only stopping because I had to for work and socializing (damn social life!), and now I want to go back and reread the series to see how it all falls together. I definitely recommend it to anyone who might be turned off because it's a YA novel.