Allegiant by Veronica Roth, a Woeful Tale of Author Lost

So many bad reviews for an author who was adored by so many loyal fans! This book was literally flogged for weeks on Facebook creating a frenzy of anticipation. I really think that Ms. Roth has misjudged her fan base, this is a YA book defined as younger teens up to about 17 years old -- adults can read and appreciate the trilogy but the true fans are the young ones, primarily female, who closely identify with Tris, her tender attraction to Four, her coming of age, her budding consciousness of her physical and spiritual powers. The point of the trilogy is to show how experience changes people, for better or worse, makes them grow and develop and gives them the power to forgive and accept. I really think that Roth's fans would have forgiven her even if she had put Tris or Four into wheelchairs, or blinded them for life, or any other such horrible fate, but to kill of the character with which her readers identify and whom they cherish and emulate, well that is really unforgiveable in a book written for this age group. It is a violation of trust. And I think it is an exceptionally bad message considering the group she is writing for -- To sacrifice yourself for another is an adult decision to be made by adults -- it is a dangerous decision to be handed to susceptible teenagers. Ms. Roth is a young and inexperienced writer, most of her characters are flat and speak with the same voice, her plots are uninflected, monotonous bordering on incomprehensible ( except in the first book, Divergent, which was a brilliant idea), but she created a fascinating dystopia and a vivid, endearing relationship between two exemplary teens and then she just gave it all up in exchange for what? -- to be judged as a bold, innovative author? -- death and suffering are common, teens don't go to fiction of this kind to repeat what is going on in their own reality, they go there for hope and pleasure -- to be excited and to dream about the future of their beloved characters and their own lives. I simply think that Ms. Roth should have considered who she is really writing for -- not for the odd adult who happens to like teen dystopian fiction, but for the very vunerable young person for whom these books are major milestones, highly anticipated events and beloved memories.

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Isn't it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different. C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian

I have enjoyed and learned a lot from this exercise. Most basically, it  has helped me in word processing ( I do not use it much in my library work, so the mechanics of the blog were relatively challenging to me at the beginning.) Writing book reviews has been a great joy, it has improved my critical skills and forced me to consciously evaluate the quality and content of my creations throughout various revisions. The information about review sites, booklists, critical sites was extremely valuable and helped break me out of the usual places I go to find information about media. Reading other librarian's blogs was a real eye opener --how differently we all view and respond to the same question! Just when I thought I had a most ideal response to a question, I read somebody else's blog which had an equally legitimate, and completely different answer -- this really has expanded my knowledge and added to my respect for my colleagues. It has also forced me to think about divergent ways to learn and create and how important these are to younger readers who are growing up in an almost 180 degree different learning environment from the one I experienced . Although we all have a structurally similar brain,  our view of the world, our methods of creating and disseminating information, the very structure of our thoughts has been completely transformed by the computer- this is the most basic difference among  the generations at this time and that revelation is one of the keys to providing excellent customer service.

If children are our future ( which they obviously are) then book trailers are also part of the future of  book marketing.  I read a lot of online news sites and lately I have been noticing that story links are starting more and more to lead to videos. This is intensely annoying to me because I tend to view reading and watching as two different and separate entities -- this is one of the reasons I have so much trouble with foreign films, I simply cannot coordinate reading the subtitles and watching the films effectively -- it results in a very unpleasant viewing experience for me. This is also why I have so much trouble with graphic novels. But I am old and was not brought up to be visually oriented -- we did not learn visually when I went to school, we learned by reading and discussion-after we read and discussed, then visual reinforcement may have been added as a treat -- so evidently my brain has developed differently from today's people. Young people today are intensely visual, therefore we are getting more visual links on news sites, critical sites, blog sites. I viewed a few book trailers from popular teen books, Warm Bodies, Divergent, Poison Princess. They all had a high viewership ( not viral, but high). Warm Bodies and Divergent were extremely professional productions -- WB had striking and stark visuals accompanied by reading and written reviews, Divergent's was only about 45 seconds long, totally symbolic and visual with very powerful music. I also often view short book trailers on television and, I have to admit, sometimes the production does at least pique my interest in the book. I don't think that at this time book trailers are making a huge impact but I predict that they certainly will in the future simply because our new adults are innured to the visual in their learning process. That is why the young adult trailers are more popular than the adult trailers, different ages, different brains. I cannot see these advertisements as being particularly useful for RA. They certainly are not balanced criticisms of the book and the very, very visual ones do not convey much about the plot or characters. The book trailer for Poison Princess, however, was quite helpful in elucidating plot and characters because it was just a straight discussion by Kresley Cole about the origin and import of different plot elements -- so I guess it depends upon type of trailer, the ones which are purely visual or musical are of no help but author discussions and online critiques can be of value.

Pain, Parties, Work Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953

Just to be up front, I personally do not like Sylvia Plath, her abandonment of her children and disdain for her family turn my stomach a little. I very rarely make judgements about authors and I don't know why I make the exception for her -- maybe it is because so many young women view her as some kind of role model and I think that is misguided-- no matter how good your poetry is it does no good for your children if you choose to commit suicide when they are toddlers -- and maybe it is because I have  gained some perspective and learned to prioritize because I have been fortunate to live much longer than she did. Nevertheless, I like The Bell Jar . That metaphor for depression is absolutely spot on  -- certainly we have all felt that heavy, airless, suffocation that clots the mind and slows the body . It is the mental equivalent of  iron deficiency or an asthma attack. The lack of oxygen darkens and narrows the vision.  This book is a memoir of the Plath's life during the time in which the The Bell Jar takes place. It is based on the memories of the other ladies who joined Sylvia as guest editors for Madamoiselle magazine in 1953. Sylvia, the brilliant young writer on the cusp of a magnificent career, decked out in  fifties glamor, the full, ballet length dresses with cinched-in waists, which exaggerated and enhanced the female form,  the intensely red lips and nails which advertised  female sexuality, the smooth pageboys , the mandatory gloves, matching hats, bags and shoes-- combine this plethora of clothing and cosmetics with a small, airless , broiling hotel room in one of the hottest summers in memory and you have your  bell jar, the physical setting  of Sylvia's most exciting summer . The fifties -- glamour - a wonderful time to be a woman -- well, no, because by and large no matter how brilliant and creative and excellent you may have been, the expectation for all women was full time wife and motherhood -- and  this dip into exciting careerism in New York's publishing industry only sharpened that dichotomy between desire and ultimate duty providing for some pretty intense internal pressure. Sylvia's colleagues relate the externals of Sylvia's journey in The Bell Jar, her hard work with interviews and articles, her photographic shoots for the college issue, her bout with food poisoning, her poisonous dates, her male admirers, her final evening, throwing her New York wardrobe off the high-rise roof, feeding it to the night. That hot, high, fast summer of the Rosenbergs. The book is a perfect companion to Sylvia's memoir, the same progression of events from two points of view, theirs objective, hers slightly crazy, intensely subjective. Not all the memories are good ones, though, for Sylvia disappointed many with her fictionalization of them in The Bell Jar. Upon reading that book, a few discovered what Sylvia really thought of them back then and it was not pleasant to learn- they felt cheated, exposed and misrepresented. Sylvia herself swore that her characters and the events portrayed within the book were fiction, based on reality, but really, the events, the people, the setting, they are all the same viewed through the prism of Sylvia's intense and sometimes harsh judgement. Yet all of the ladies interviewed confessed deep admiration Sylvia' s originality and energy and none of them judged her negatively for her final decision. This book is a short, sweet read for Sylvia admirers and those curious about the facts about that memorable summer.

When Ann Rule wrote her first book The Stranger Beside Me, she was a former cop, a writer of true crime for pulp magazines, a struggling divorcee with five young children and a volunteer for a suicide hotline. Her fellow hotline volunteer just happened to be Ted Bundy, serial killer extraordinaire, whose subsequent kills, arrrests, escapes, trials and execution resulted in a spate of books, character studies and psychological debates. But Ann's was the first study and , really, the most intimate, because she actually knew Bundy in real life, followed his activities over many years, chatted with him over lunch, commiserated with him over his legal entanglements, wrote him letters in prison, conveyed messages to his girlfriends all the while trying to convince herself that he was innocent -- simply a victim of circumstance. Ann Rule is a calm, clear, laconic writer balancing fact and supposition, thoroughly researching the circumstances and the victims of each of Ted's atrocities. She is particularly attuned to the tragedy of the victims and the unending anguish of their families -- she avoids the dehumanizing details of each crime and presents Ted's victims as complete human beings, gracious and lovely young ladies on the cusp of adulthood and all the exhilarating adventures that would bring. Her newest redaction of this iconic work is particularly interesting for she presents letters and conversations with young women who were almost Ted's chosen -- ladies who by fate or grace managed to escape. There are many such testimonies in the book -- well, Ted was a busy boy as we all know. This book is really an icon of early true crime -- an absolute must read for anybody who follows the genre -- the subject is dark and horrific but Rule's writing is full of grace and compassion for the lost women. In subsequent books by other authors, the true sick and vile horror of the monster that was Bundy is revealed. Ann Rule does not dwell on these disgusting details, I think, out of respect for the victims and their loved ones. I admire her for this because it elevates the genre of true crime which, at times, reads like a  gross violation of the dignity of the murdered. Rule's books never make the reader feel dirty or invasive because she herself does not exhibit these traits. Her work is a serious investigation of a very, very sick person. She never drags the reader down to the level of her repellent subject. For fiction I may recommend Defending Jacob. 

To complete this assignment I wrote comments to Brice and Monty.

John Krakauer's first book Into the Wild is the story of sensitive, reclusive Christopher McCandless, who abandons his family and future to live his own particular adventure as Alex Supertramp, walking, hitching, and jumping freight trains in pursuit of the elusive existential journey of self-discovery. Through his letters and journals, observations of his fellow tramps and occasional employers, anguished memories of his parents and sister, we follow him from his affluent home in suburbs of Washington DC, to the wheatfields of South Dakota, the rubber tramp camps of the southwest and finally to his cherished goal, Alaska. This book is more than a character discovery, however, for Krakauer leads us through the history of these one man odysseys, from Everett Ruess, to Jon Waterman and introduces us to a bevy of Chris's fellow travellers, the lost and forgotten, their back stories and memories. Chris's places and literal journeys are important, but his effect on people and their subsequent influence on him are the crux of this book. There are a lot of opinions about Chris -- the young view him as some sort of existential hero, the old and more experienced as an arrogant fool blinded by the romance of the road and the solitary life. Krakauer acknowledges these disagreements and , at the same time, presents a full and compassionate portrait of a very young and struggling soul whose illusions are gradually stripped away leaving him truly naked and defenseless. I recommend this book for adventurers, philosophers, spiritual travelers, parents and young people. It is a deep study of a fleeting moment in a young man's life, his great and absolute joy of discovery and his terrible final fear of the consequences of his enthusiasm. For fiction, I would recommend Jack London's short story "To Light a Fire".