Busy busy busy.... I'm mostly recovered from Electric Coffeehouse IX (pics are here & here) and Thanksgiving, so I'm back to posting. I want to thank Mrs. Willard for contributing to the blog - nice to have you on board. I'm still in the middle of several things, including Hello, Groin by Beth Goobie and Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin.
"Groin" is interesting, but I think the audience may be a bit limited. It's about a teen girl, Dylan, who is struggling with her sexual identity. SHE knows who she is, but the rest of the world doesn't and she's torn between keeping her social status and being herself. The book has a distinctly Canadian feel to it (now there's something you don't hear every day...), and I'm still on the fence about it overall. I'll post again after I finish.
"Memoirs" has more broad appeal. I think this one's going to be very popular around here. Naomi takes a header, whacks her head, and forgets everything that's happened to her in the past 4 years. It turns out that's a lot of stuff. Her parents divorced, she's dating a popular guy & hanging with his friends, she's co-editor of the yearbook, etc. As she rediscovers her life, she finds a lot to question. I think a lot of us wonder what it would be like to get a blank slate. This is an interesting twist on that idea.I've also been reading the Tom Strong comics by Alan Moore. I really like some of his other stuff (V for Vendetta, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Watchmen, Top Ten). This is an odd mix of adventure/superhero, with a lot of different "devices" in play. There are stories within stories, lots of different time periods, incredibly cliched characters and dialogue (deliberately so), etc. I'm warming up to it. Top Ten was similar for me - I wasn't sure at first, but wound up really loving it. Moore is one of the most interesting comics writers out there - always pushing the envelope and bucking convention.
Later!
B
1 comment:
I read Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac and I really enjoyed it alot. It was a book that was real enough to believe, and yet it was out there enough to make you think about it. It kind of got me thinking about what I would think about my life if I lost my memory...
I thought that it was interesting that the things that meant so much to her before her accident didn't mean that much to her after all, and that all the things that she took for granted or pushed out of her life she decided that she needed or wanted them. Kind of like she just valued stuff or hated stuff because she had done so in the past, and so that pushed her to keep making the same decisions over and over again...and I think that we all do that, especially as high school students, and we just get stuck in a rut and the stuff that we do has no real meaning anymore, it's just what we are expected to do...
To sum up everything above: I think that this is an amazing book, and that it has a good message!
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