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of books and backs
Oct. 22nd, 2008 09:57 amThe tailbone is feeling better--it still aches some and I have to change positions frequently (I was hoping to go see my parents this weekend, but I don't think long car rides are in my immediate future--owie). But I'm not having the spasms of pain when I move any more, which is good. I just want to make sure it's completely healed before I do anything drastic.
In the meantime I've been resting a lot (my body is cheering the extra sleep, let me tell you) and reading. I found Crossing to Paradise, by Kevin Crossley-Holland last time in the library. It's a fourth book to his Arthur trilogy, only with Gatty as main character. It's called Gatty's Tale in the original British edition; I read it in German last year. It just came out in the States, edited by the amazing Cheryl Klein of Arthur A. Levine (who published the American edition of Harry Potter). When I read this book the first time I was starving for words, and I devoured it, despite being in German. I'm eager to see how the American edition reads. The author has a note in the foreword that indicates there are some differences in this edition. I wonder how that works? It's not a translation. How substantially do books differ which have English-speaking editors on both sides of the Atlantic? If you have a chance, I do highly recommend this book. It's one of the few historical medieval novels where the faith of the characters feels genuine, as opposed to just a personality quirk. The shape of the book is a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in which Gatty goes as proxy for her village. I felt that she went for me, the reader, as well. Lovely.
In other books (which I won't name) I've noticed a trend I don't care for. I've seen it come up in several books by different people now, so it isn't aimed at anyone in particular, but there is an aspect of teen pregnancy that doesn't work for me at all. (Well, maybe more than one, but this one is plot- and story-oriented, and counts for both books with wed and unwed teens.) I don't like the stories where the MC is the daughter of some super young artsy/magical mother who does her own thing, and a one-night father who never comes into the story--and there are generations of this--and then the MC ends up repeating this, and it's all women and men are kind of superfluous and being a mother at 15 or so is supposed to be this romantic/magical experience. While yes, it's very believable that the dad in such a situation will take off, and also that people tend to repeat the mistakes of the past, I don't buy that people will just willy-nilly buy every mistake of their elders without at least thinking about changing things. So if they don't like this life, they should at least question things before they repeat it. Also, I don't think it's realistic to brush off the usefulness of half the human race. Also, while motherhood is pretty much an amazing thing and empowering and all, I wouldn't describe it as romantic or anything. It's very, very HARD. It's called REAL LIFE. And this is why it doesn't work when a teen has a baby in this kind of book. The thing is, teenagers and YA--that's all about the teens. They are the center of the known universe. Their struggles, their stages of becoming. But parenthood is NOTHING about yourself. It's all about someone else. So suddenly this switches the entire focus of the book for me, and either it reads like an adult novel all of a sudden, giving me genre whiplash, or it simply fails for me. Also, what do you DO with this kid once it's there? Too often, there are competent adults who appear almost by magic to whisk the kid away so that the teen mom can do all her stuff. But you know what? You can't go back. After that, you're a different person. Even if you aren't nursing, that kid is a part of you now, a responsibility always on your mind. Once you have a kid, you aren't a kid anymore. So it doesn't feel believable to me that other adults can take the baby and the teen MC can keep playing the same old teenager games as if nothing has changed. Also, the baby rarely has a personality in these books. I guess you could say that books/series/epics that are multigenerational, even without the teen pregnancy issue, don't do it for me, either. It's too hard to be close to too many people in the book, and to switch allegiances. Which is possibly the cause of the no-personality offspring, but it is still not a solution, IMO. (Problem novels about teen pregnancy are a different genre--I think they sometimes do succeed here, although I admit it's not the kind of genre I'm really into.) Anyway, I just read one of these where I was really liking the book until this came up, and now it's sort of collapsed for me. Am I the only one who has problems with the Superfluous Fictional Baby?
ETA: One YA book with a baby that does work for me is A Curse Dark as Gold. But look at it--it's not a case of have baby, abandon it to go play. The whole book is about this baby, how to protect it, what to do with it. We're thinking babies and curses long before this baby shows up. So I think there are ways of making it work. But more often than not, it doesn't to me.
(And judging by the extreme silence, on this post, I might be the only one who feels this way...)
In the meantime I've been resting a lot (my body is cheering the extra sleep, let me tell you) and reading. I found Crossing to Paradise, by Kevin Crossley-Holland last time in the library. It's a fourth book to his Arthur trilogy, only with Gatty as main character. It's called Gatty's Tale in the original British edition; I read it in German last year. It just came out in the States, edited by the amazing Cheryl Klein of Arthur A. Levine (who published the American edition of Harry Potter). When I read this book the first time I was starving for words, and I devoured it, despite being in German. I'm eager to see how the American edition reads. The author has a note in the foreword that indicates there are some differences in this edition. I wonder how that works? It's not a translation. How substantially do books differ which have English-speaking editors on both sides of the Atlantic? If you have a chance, I do highly recommend this book. It's one of the few historical medieval novels where the faith of the characters feels genuine, as opposed to just a personality quirk. The shape of the book is a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in which Gatty goes as proxy for her village. I felt that she went for me, the reader, as well. Lovely.
In other books (which I won't name) I've noticed a trend I don't care for. I've seen it come up in several books by different people now, so it isn't aimed at anyone in particular, but there is an aspect of teen pregnancy that doesn't work for me at all. (Well, maybe more than one, but this one is plot- and story-oriented, and counts for both books with wed and unwed teens.) I don't like the stories where the MC is the daughter of some super young artsy/magical mother who does her own thing, and a one-night father who never comes into the story--and there are generations of this--and then the MC ends up repeating this, and it's all women and men are kind of superfluous and being a mother at 15 or so is supposed to be this romantic/magical experience. While yes, it's very believable that the dad in such a situation will take off, and also that people tend to repeat the mistakes of the past, I don't buy that people will just willy-nilly buy every mistake of their elders without at least thinking about changing things. So if they don't like this life, they should at least question things before they repeat it. Also, I don't think it's realistic to brush off the usefulness of half the human race. Also, while motherhood is pretty much an amazing thing and empowering and all, I wouldn't describe it as romantic or anything. It's very, very HARD. It's called REAL LIFE. And this is why it doesn't work when a teen has a baby in this kind of book. The thing is, teenagers and YA--that's all about the teens. They are the center of the known universe. Their struggles, their stages of becoming. But parenthood is NOTHING about yourself. It's all about someone else. So suddenly this switches the entire focus of the book for me, and either it reads like an adult novel all of a sudden, giving me genre whiplash, or it simply fails for me. Also, what do you DO with this kid once it's there? Too often, there are competent adults who appear almost by magic to whisk the kid away so that the teen mom can do all her stuff. But you know what? You can't go back. After that, you're a different person. Even if you aren't nursing, that kid is a part of you now, a responsibility always on your mind. Once you have a kid, you aren't a kid anymore. So it doesn't feel believable to me that other adults can take the baby and the teen MC can keep playing the same old teenager games as if nothing has changed. Also, the baby rarely has a personality in these books. I guess you could say that books/series/epics that are multigenerational, even without the teen pregnancy issue, don't do it for me, either. It's too hard to be close to too many people in the book, and to switch allegiances. Which is possibly the cause of the no-personality offspring, but it is still not a solution, IMO. (Problem novels about teen pregnancy are a different genre--I think they sometimes do succeed here, although I admit it's not the kind of genre I'm really into.) Anyway, I just read one of these where I was really liking the book until this came up, and now it's sort of collapsed for me. Am I the only one who has problems with the Superfluous Fictional Baby?
ETA: One YA book with a baby that does work for me is A Curse Dark as Gold. But look at it--it's not a case of have baby, abandon it to go play. The whole book is about this baby, how to protect it, what to do with it. We're thinking babies and curses long before this baby shows up. So I think there are ways of making it work. But more often than not, it doesn't to me.
(And judging by the extreme silence, on this post, I might be the only one who feels this way...)
