54. The Family Fang, Kevin Wilson
Boyfriend's mom likes to lend me realistic fiction books about incredibly strange people, which always end up being highly enjoyable and balanced somewhere between endearing, amusing, and a little bit sad. The Family Fang is no exception, although the strangeness is booted up to eleven - Caleb and Camille Fang are performance artists specializing in public disruption, and their children Annie and Buster get used as tools in their performances until they're old enough to flee into the normal the world. The book does a lot of questioning about the nature and value of art, as well as studying the weight of family connections. (When Annie and Buster fall on hard times as adults, they are forced to move back in with their parents - to everyone's consternation.) I enjoyed it, although it gets pretty bleak in places; the chapters alternate between what is happening in the book's present and the Fangs' performances in the past. Reading about the things the parents persuade their children to do in the name of art is like a train wreck: mesmerizing and traumatic.
55. Nothing, Janne Teller
This was one of the selections on my YA Literature class syllabus that I did not get a chance to read, but after hearing from my classmates it sounded rather intriguing. It is, but it's...rough. Nothing is a Danish book about a class of 13 year olds, one of whom decides that since nothing matters, nothing means anything and nothing is worth doing, so he starts spending every day up in the branches of a tree. His classmates decide to show him that there is meaning in the wold by collecting what they come to term their "heap of meaning" - a pile of things that mean the most to them. Except it becomes obvious that no one is contributing what means the most to them, so they start picking for each other, and...things escalate quickly. It's horrifying, watching what these kids push each other to do; the front cover flap calls it reminiscent of Lord of the Flies, which turns out to be a pretty apt comparison.
56. Muchacho, LouAnne Johnson
Read for my advocacy class. It's about a Hispanic high school student in New Mexico, who can fairly be described as "high risk." He goes to an alternative school and has an incredibly bitter outlook on life, until he starts dating a girl who's smart and perceptive enough that he starts trying to turn himself around. Gang activity, drug talk, and some pretty deep insights abound - it's a good read, but there are moments where I simply did not believe that some of these insights could have originated with the character, considering how disengaged he is and his education level.
Boyfriend's mom likes to lend me realistic fiction books about incredibly strange people, which always end up being highly enjoyable and balanced somewhere between endearing, amusing, and a little bit sad. The Family Fang is no exception, although the strangeness is booted up to eleven - Caleb and Camille Fang are performance artists specializing in public disruption, and their children Annie and Buster get used as tools in their performances until they're old enough to flee into the normal the world. The book does a lot of questioning about the nature and value of art, as well as studying the weight of family connections. (When Annie and Buster fall on hard times as adults, they are forced to move back in with their parents - to everyone's consternation.) I enjoyed it, although it gets pretty bleak in places; the chapters alternate between what is happening in the book's present and the Fangs' performances in the past. Reading about the things the parents persuade their children to do in the name of art is like a train wreck: mesmerizing and traumatic.
55. Nothing, Janne Teller
This was one of the selections on my YA Literature class syllabus that I did not get a chance to read, but after hearing from my classmates it sounded rather intriguing. It is, but it's...rough. Nothing is a Danish book about a class of 13 year olds, one of whom decides that since nothing matters, nothing means anything and nothing is worth doing, so he starts spending every day up in the branches of a tree. His classmates decide to show him that there is meaning in the wold by collecting what they come to term their "heap of meaning" - a pile of things that mean the most to them. Except it becomes obvious that no one is contributing what means the most to them, so they start picking for each other, and...things escalate quickly. It's horrifying, watching what these kids push each other to do; the front cover flap calls it reminiscent of Lord of the Flies, which turns out to be a pretty apt comparison.
56. Muchacho, LouAnne Johnson
Read for my advocacy class. It's about a Hispanic high school student in New Mexico, who can fairly be described as "high risk." He goes to an alternative school and has an incredibly bitter outlook on life, until he starts dating a girl who's smart and perceptive enough that he starts trying to turn himself around. Gang activity, drug talk, and some pretty deep insights abound - it's a good read, but there are moments where I simply did not believe that some of these insights could have originated with the character, considering how disengaged he is and his education level.
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