re jane. patricia park. (301)

i picked up re jane after seeing it in a post on book riot.  a retelling of jane eyre with a half-korean, half-white/american protagonist!  i was in!

oh and if you read my previous post, and wondering why i was am okay with this retelling and not the last novel i read, was because park did take all of her storylines directly from bronte, instead, she took the overall structure, but wrote her own book.

before i start, if you ever read my post on jane eyre, you know that i loved it, but i did have issue with rochester being the only person ever talked with so i felt bad that she had no other experiences other than him.  though i mean their love was true, i still always wondered you know.  i didn't have this issue with re jane though i was shocked at times by how sheltered jane was but while during bronte's time all women were that sheltered, park made sure her jane was aware that she was.

just like jane eyre, re jane, started off with an orphan named jane that lived with family members that treated her poorly.  jane hoping to escape her uncle, sang, went to to work as au pair for a family.  the rochester of this work was ed farley, the father of the adopted girl, jane was in charge of.  and just like jane eyre there was a wife, but while rochester's was locked away in the attic, this wife, beth, was not crazy (well not in the same way as rochester's first wife) that worked in the attic.  i have to say the fact that ed and beth were married, made me very wary of jane falling in love with ed.  whereas i gushed over rochester and jane's budding romance in jane eyre, i was really uncomfortable about ed and jane's, though it did make me hungry for heroes.  even though park set up beth as an insensitive and overbearing wife and mother, i still was upset with jane for trying to be a homewrecker.  i was grateful that park stopped ed and jane from having sex (the tip doesn't count for me), because i would not have been able to go on with the book.  as you know from other books, i don't like cheaters.  anyway, that is really where the parallels between the two books stop.

i will add that park did include nods to jane eyre, having jane address the reader as a reader and jane's first job was to be at a company named lowood.  i thought these little details were cute.

back to the story, the climax of the novel, is when jane and ed decide to finally have sex, as i mentioned before it didn't happen.  on the night that they were to meet and try it again, jane decided to go to korea to see her grandfather on his deathbed.  the day she decided to leave . . . 9/11.  so as i read, i couldn't really gage the era, i figured it was now.  however, after a mention of the twin towers and the backstreets boys and of course this, i knew.  i have to add, i feel like a lot of books have been alluding to this, which is fine, it must be mentioned especially if a work is set in new york.  however, i feel like it shouldn't be used as a device to cause a drastic change, i think jane could have left on any day and the novel would not have lost anything.

okay, so jane went to korean.  she learned more about who she is, which she needed.  she even became engaged to a guy, but thanks to her aunt and this soap opera realized that she still loved ed.  so she came clean to everyone, ed about her love, beth about their affair, and returned to nyc.  however, once back, she realized just how different she and ed really were, and yes, dear reader, they broke up.  which i actually appreciated, i mean they were at different stages in their lives and also there was so much more she needed to experience.  i mean i was fine with jane eyre ending up rochester, because i mean what else was there for a single girl to do, then to be an old maid.  luckily, though nowadays, we have so many options.  it was great to see jane end up as an independent woman!

a greater part of the novel, aside from this kind of love story and self-discovery, was race, culture and identity.  to start jane was mixed, her mother was korean and her father was america, due to this she felt like an outcast.  people spoke and thought poorly of her mother.  in addition to this, she never felt like she fully identified as a korean.  it was the same situation for the child she was in charge of, devon.  devon was a chinese girl adopted by two american parents.  at school, she felt like an outcast due to her mixed cultured background.  her mother, beth, tried to keep her immerse in chinese culture but she still was not accepted by her fellow chinese students. being mixed and being americanized culturally, i understood how both of them felt uncomfortable among people with the same racial identity as them.  there was a scene in which jane and devon got moon cakes and devon became uncomfortable because although she looked chinese, she wasn't culturally chinese and couldn't speak the language.  i used to feel the same way as a kid, i look filipino but was not raised culturally filipino and did not learn the language, so when i am around alot of filipinos i do not know, i feel uncomfortable.  like jane and hopefully devon, you reach a point where, it doesn't really matter if your own people judge you, you have to learn to be happy with who you are.

in addition to this, i have to add that at the beginning i had mentioned how jane's family was mean towards her.  in jane eyre, her family was outright abusive.  however, in re jane, it was more of a cultural difference which made the reader and jane initially believe that her uncle hated and took her for granted.  its tough because as an outsider, we tend to judge without really knowing, this is what occurred when beth and ed tried to tell jane that she didn't have to obey her uncle (ironically, ed was doing the very thing he critiqued jane's uncle of doing, being controlling).  however, we gradually begin to see that jane's uncle is not a bad guy at all, he made sacrifices for her and he always made sure that she was taken care of even when she tried to push him away.  and in the end, the reader realizes when jane does that some things were lost in translation that maybe what she took as an insult was actually him trying to help her improve or actually meant as a compliment.  in the end, it was great to see her make peace with her uncle and culture.

the book of lost things. john connolly. (293)

i don't know how the book of lost things, got on my to-read list.  i thought it was new book, but it has been out since 2006.  i read it on some list as a retelling of fairy tales, which is why i check it out, this type of work is part of my book riot read harder challenge.

before i have start, i have to say that i wish i had discovered this work earlier because then i could have shared it with my grandma.  this is totally something she would have loved.  it actually reminded me of the abc show, once upon the time.  i mean i feel that conolly could have been a writer for a series, especially since the villain, the crooked man, turned out to be rumplstiltskin, just like the series.  also, the whole ripping pit the heart to take one's soul and lifetime was just like once as well.

the novel opened with a young boy, david, losing his mother.  he was a lover of books and they begin talking to him.  his father remarried a woman named rose and they have a child, george.  david and his father move into rose's home.  he stayed in a room that previously belonged to her uncle, a fellow book lover that disappeared one day with his adopted sister.

david began to see a crooked man and have nightmares and one day ended up traveling to another world through a hole in a tree (kind of like, once).  

on the other side, he befriended a woodcutter that saved his life and suggested that he go to the king to help

him return home.  the king had a book, the book of lost things (the title) that should help him!

along the way, david encountered different characters and hears tales similar to the fairy tales that he loves.  he meets half wolf/half human creatures that are offspring of little red riding hood who decided to lie with wolves instead of kill them.  he met a crazy woman that combined the bodies of humans and animals so that she had new creatures to hunt.  he heard the story of hansel and gretel but in this version, gretel saved the day but instead of living happily ever after with gretel, hansel went looking for his mother and ened up disappearing after entering the home of an old woman.  he met a knight that turned out to be gay and searching for his lover who had gone out looking for briar rose aka sleeping beauty. he also shared a morbid tale bad on the prince and pauper.  

in the end, david escaped death a handful of times and ended up at the king's castle.  however, he discovered that the king was in cahoots with the crooked man.  it turned out the crooked man took the hearts of children which then added years to his life.  he sought out children who hated their siblings and convinced them to bring their siblings to the other world so he could steal the siblings' hearts and years and then make the jealous child the king or queen.  this is what happen to david's stepmother's uncle.  the crooked man wanted the name of george and would make david king.  however, david resist and the king and crooked men were destroyed by the wolf/man hybrids.  and david returned home.

i have to add this novel went on to share the rest of david's life which felt excessive, but in the end, david ended up back in the magical land.  minus all the evil, of course.

an enjoyable read.  i, of course, loved all the retellings of the fairy tales, so thanks book riot for this challenge.

namedropper. emma forrest. (273)

for 2015, i decided to do book riot's "read harder" challenge.  one of the challenges is to read a book that someone wrote when they were under the age of 25.  lucky for me, flavorpill had a post about authors who published great books before the age of 25.  this is how i discovered emma forrest and namedropper.  the flavorpill blurb nameddropped tavi gevinson and lena dunham and so of course i had to read this.  furthermore, it mentioned that the book came out when forrest was being called "the teenage 'voice of her generation'".

i have to say that if i read this back in 1998, i would have been obsessed with emma forrest and namedropper.  i really wish i would have found it in high school, like i stumbled upon blake nelson's girl.  i mean the cover would have won me over.  oh well.  adult me read it and loved it, but not as much as teenage me would have.

namedropper follows the life of teenager viv cohen.  viv was obsessed with old hollywood, best friends with a druggy hot girl, treena, and an aging pop star, ray, and was raised by her gay uncle.  (i would have loved to have been raised by a gay uncle!)  the heart of the story is one night, she met the opening act for ray, a boy named drew, his band named "kindness of strangers" (which is cute now that i think about it. lol) viv and i have the same taste in men because i would have been all about drew.  scrawny, pale kid, artsy, bookish, into things from the past and depressed.  i imagined conor oberst as i read. lol.  after a lovely evening, in which viv falls in love.  drew winds up missing and she decided to go on a search for him.

  

viv and ray go on a hunt for drew, but the end result was that viv discovered her night with drew was nothing special for the desk girl at the hotel had a similar night as well. 

but life is not sad for too long, because ray invited her and treena to los angeles with him while he promoted his new album in the states. maybe i was smarter than average bear, but i knew that treena and ray were fucking. i knew the second he left viv on the drew hunt.  anyway, i felt bad for viv cos i have been in that awkwardness before.  but it wasn't that bad, because viv had her adventure with the lead singer of ray's rvial band.  i wish there love affair would have lasted, but it had to end.  he had a girlfriend.  also i like uncle many was pissed about tattoos.

so that is a run down of the story, which was enjoyable.  i, of course, loved the bit about hollywood.  i have to add that it made me sad that i never visited the rocky and bullwinkle gift shop that viv mentioned.  i googled the dudley-do right emporium and it closed in 2005 and i was in la during the time.  i used to always take the  bus down sunset to the greyhound so i know i passed it but it didn't strike a cord in me.  i definitely got drunk on sunset too.  i googled and looked at pics, and it looked vaguely familiar, but i could just want the memory.

so as i said, i would have been obsessed with this book, if i was a teen, because i would have loved reading about her fun adventures with bands.  but what made me love this book now was all of the witty writing.  here is some of my favorite:

from their black miss haversham clothes, i guessed the former.  (i love the description of the goth wear!)

my moods are the equivalent to madonna's dancing:  inappropriate but all-out. 

tears sprung in my eyes, like russian ballet stars.

she looked like a quentin blake illustration in a roald dahl book.  (so cute right?)

all in all, a delightful book, which i recommend if you love tavi and lena.  oh and i have to add, it totally made me crave salt and vinegar crisps, which viv ate and so of course after reading, i had to do!

                                                                                                         

blankets. craig thompson. (253)

blankets has been on my to read list for a very long time.  however, when i saw it on time's 100 best young adult books, i decided to finally check it out.

i really wish that i had read this when it first came out in 2003.  i identified with craig and would have enjoyed reading this closer to when i went through a similar experience.  blanket is an semi-autobiographical graphic novel about thompson's experience growing up in a religious household and his first love.  what i identified with was craig's questioning of his faith and the church leaders insistence on following christian path.  my questioning of my religion, as i discussed before was due to the church views on homosexuality and how i thought it was unfair that families were separated unless they were sealed in the temple.  for craig it was contradiction in the bible and the realization that though the bible may be the word of god it had been filtered through men.  also reading his pastor advise him against going to art school due to the possibility of exposure to nude models and the risk of becoming a homosexual, reminded me of an conversation i had once with a girl i went to church with.  (i may have shared this before in another post, so i apologize for being redundant.  a girl i went to church camp asked me where i was going to school, and i told her ucla.  she then asked me what i was going to do.  i explained study history.  but she asked again, but you go to byu to get married, how are you going to get married.  i think i just smiled as a response.  though i will say that i am grateful for being raised mormon.  as child growing up, we did not fear god, but saw jesus as a loving savior, and were not made to be scared of hell as i saw with craig.

but college was an eye opening experience for me, like craig.  i wasn't born in a completely rural area like him, but being exposed to the big city of los angeles, allowed me to realize that there was more out in the world.

the story of his first love was sweet and like should happen with all first loves, he grew as a person.  he was able to see the world for as it was and not for what he was told it was.  i think the greatest thing was that he reconnected with his brother after seeing how close raina was with her siblings.  it was nice to see them become friends in the end.  (i should also note know it was really difficult to read about his brother's molestation as a child.  craig should have done something, but easier said then done because he was a child himself, but still sickening to read.)

i also found it disheartening to read about raina's adoptive siblings.  i think it was wonderful that her parents decided to adopt two children with disabilities, however, their reasoning behind it seemed unsound.  they adopted the ben and laura as a thank you to god for blessing them with two children.  a beautiful gesture, but neither one were equipped to take care of them.  and in the end, resulted in their divorce and the responsibility becoming that of raina.  i might sound insensitive, but you should adopt to truly help a child not to prove a point about how blessed you are. 

but a wonderful coming of age story and beautiful illustrations.  i also loved that the library was a tool in helping craig discover the world and who he was.  definitely a top young adult book!