review – Page 8 – Triple Take

Doubletake: J on I Am J

You might guess why I Am J by Cris Beam caught my eye. I am J! How much more awesome was it when I learned it was about a transgender teen? Though I have to tell him, J is not a good artist name. Bad Googlefu. I even wimped out on my name badge at work and wrote it Jae. People can handle two initials. AJ, PJ, etc. But one letter just doesn’t work so well.

Case in point, while reading it was easy to mistake J for I. Just like 3-letter names that look a little too much like You aren’t good either.

This book starts off using the male pronoun for J, even though at the beginning, he hasn’t yet articulated to himself that he’s transgender. He just knows that, even though he has a crush on his female best friend, he’s not a lesbian. I sort of liked that. Sometimes books like this just start out with the teen knowing who they are and only having to go through the process of convincing everyone else. In this one, he was still wrestling the idea of his own identity.

All is not sweetness and light in the land of J either. Full of angst! He runs away, then comes back. Then runs away with more planning, and gets hooked up with a teen shelter and an LGBT high school. Then gets dragged back home. He tells his mother, who then basically (but nicely, if manipulatively and sneakily) kicks him out.

In contrast to Parrotfish and Luna, this gets quite heavily into the nitty gritty. For instance, just as I was wondering what happens if you start taking testosterone and then stop, the book tells me. I wouldn’t say it’s exactly a how-to manual, but it does answer many questions you might have about the whole thing.

I did find a couple of things difficult to believe. He reads up on testosterone on the Internet, and then something like a day later, he’s thinking of it as T. Isn’t that something you’d pick up after being part of a community? And why didn’t he reach out on forums and things to other transmen? He just decides one day to go to the clinic and try to get some ‘T’. Like.. didn’t anything he read online tell him you can’t just do that? I think even Oprah (aww, she just had her last show) knows you need a brain doctor to approve that sort of thing.

And then to just be able to waltz into an LGBT high school! Jeez, must be nice to live in a big city where they have high schools for everything! That’s almost like living in a fairy tale. It’s hard for me to believe those even exist. When my choice of high school was the public school or the Catholic school in the next town. Is there even an LGBT college? Hrrm.

Speaking of colleges, his mother is all ‘Apply to college. Here’s some applications I got for you.’ And then he carries those things around for awhile, and I’m like.. what? What year is this? Paper! Paper applications?! Snail mail?! I mean, I suppose some of them might still exist, but not the big schools.. not most schools?

All in all, I’m glad this book exists. There definitely needs to be more like it. When the only two I can think of are also the only two listed in the additional reading at the back of the book, well… Still, I did enjoy Parrotfish much more. So if you only want to read one, read that one.

I Am J is another voice in a very small crowd, and I’m glad it exists. Plus, still gotta love that title.

The Wilder Life (Wendy McClure)

The Plot
Author Wendy McClure immerses herself in the world of the Little House books after she rereads them as an adult. The tale of the Ingalls family gets a hold on her imagination and she begins her journey into “Laura World”, a strange place where doomsday religious extremists can bump up against East coast liberals and cheerful homeschooling families. Where fans of the television series and fans of the books have wildly divergent views of the same source material. Where the true facts of history occasionally conflict with the sometimes more persuasive reality of the books. She tries to get to the bottom of the books’ attraction and learn more about the real Laura Ingalls Wilder, whose life was softened and fictionalized for the Little House books.

My Thoughts
The timing of this book’s arrival could not have been more perfect from my perspective. Here at Tripletake we’ve been gearing up for a Little House bonanza in the second half of 2011 — we’re all to read the main series, some of us for the first time, and any of the peripheral books (some more real than the series, some less) we care to. So The Wilder Life was sure to set the right mood and prepare me to dive in.

I wasn’t wrong. This memoir/travelogue, which loosely follows McClure’s travels to a variety of the Ingalls-Wilder homestead sites, mirrored many of my own thoughts and feelings on the series exactly, and left me eager to reread not just the Little House books, but also much of the non-fiction literature that’s sprung up around them and their creator.

The book opens with McClure reminiscing on her childhood, her attraction to certain types of books, and her relationship with the Little House books in particular. So much of what she wrote was so similar to my own experiences, I spent a good portion of this chapter just nodding or laughing in agreement. To me, the Little House books were unusual in that I owned them – I’d gotten a complete boxed paperback set when I was 7 or 8 years old, around the same time I received a similar set of the Narnia books. Until I was in my teens, I actually owned very few books: there weren’t any bookstores very close to where we lived, I had no money, and I read too voraciously to support my habit that way anyhow. So there was the library. But the books I read from the library were different; they weren’t mine, and though I could always check them out again and again (and often did), it wasn’t entirely the same. And then there was the fact that Laura was “real”, an actual person who had once existed in the same ghostly, nebulous way as George Washington or Louisa May Alcott, and unlike the characters featured in most of my other books.

Like McClure, I also somehow missed out on the TV show for the most part. I believe I’m a few years younger than she, so my main memories of the show while it was still airing are of snippets from the later seasons, when things started to get crazy. When I think of Little House on the Prairie as a television show, my mind is filled with horrors: tornadoes, fires, dead babies. I was afraid of the show and even now it makes me tense when I happen to flip past it on some cable station. But though there are also terrible incidents in the books, they still retain a warm fuzzy feeling for me. And again like McClure, what sticks with me are some of the little things which sounded so exotic and fun – maple syrup on snow, braiding straw into hats, sewing quilts, smoking meat (the whole pig butchering scene, in fact, is made to sound incredibly fun and delicious, even though I’m sure I would be ill if confronted with it in real life).

I also never really thought about the fact that the places in these books were real and could be visited. To a little girl in New Hampshire, the midwest was remote, practically another planet. And even when I might have gone to visit quite easily — living in Minneapolis for two years — it never even occurred to me! For the last, I will always kick myself. (Aside: Similarly to the author’s partner, my own husband was not a Little House aficionado growing up. I suppose it’s because they’re not considered to be ‘boy’ books. But that is no excuse for being FROM WISCONSIN and having no idea that SO WAS LAURA. I’m still not over it.)

McClure finds herself drawn back in to “Laura World” after the death of her mother. Drawn back in a serious way, as she starts to research more about Laura’s real life, to read biographies and old journals and non-Little House writings. She does a huge amount of reading and research and old-timey experiments. Some of what she reveals I knew about (the Laura anime), some I’d heard of (Pioneer Girl, the original Laura draft memoir – I didn’t realize you could get a copy), and some shocked me (@halfpintingalls, a twitter account I’ve been following practically since it first appeared, is written by Wendy McClure).

Don’t get me wrong – this is not a biography, and though there is plenty of factual information about the Ingalls and Wilder family, that’s not the focus here. But the descriptions of the visits to the homestead sites are much more personal and thus more useful (at least to me) than any travel guide could be. I was especially intrigued by the visit to De Smet and the last of the Ingalls homesteads (Laura herself spent most of her adult life in Missouri, but as a Wilder). Sleeping outside in a covered wagon, even a fake one, sounded really fun. (Even after the misadventures.) I’ve had to stop myself from starting to plan a lengthy car trip vacation several times now.

In Short
I keep meditating on the book, trying to come up with something profound to say about it, but the fact is I simply enjoyed it a lot, and believe other people would, too. Especially anyone who was a little girl similar to myself. It reignited in me the desire to go visit these places at some point, and made me really excited to begin rereading the books as soon as possible. And I’ll definitely be trying some apples and onions in the near future.

Jâ€™s Take on A Spy in the House by Y. S. Lee

The basic premise of A Spy in the House is that it’s er.. Victorian? London and this girl is plucked from prison where she’s about to be hanged for theft, and brought to a school. Where she learns, not how to be a proper lady, but how to think for herself. Not that she needed much help there. But she also learns maths and things. Only learning and then teaching at the school isn’t enough, and she asks if there isn’t more. And there is. There’s the Agency, which is a private company of spies. Female spies.

Unfortunately, we don’t get to see the school at ALL. Unless you count the headmistresses’ (or whoever they are) study, or room, or office (whatever it is). Four or five years go by between the introduction and the first chapter, and suddenly she’s 17 and ready to go do spy stuff. We don’t even get to see any of her super-intensive super-secret spy training!

But, that’s okay, because she was so super-awesome that she could do it super-intensively and not the long way. And maybe I wouldn’t have twigged ‘Mary Sue!’ if it hadn’t been so recently after my discussion with K about Babel-17. But I’m calling it on this one. Total Mary Sue.

So, yea, okay, the school sounds mostly normal and boring. But it was new to her and I really, really, really would’ve liked to have seen some of it. So, at this point I’m already rather annoyed. I’m more annoyed when she passes their spy wannabe test with super-awesome flying colors. I then get further annoyed when several chapters in, we randomly get a chapter from some guy’s point of view.

It’s around about this time that I start feeling it’s a historical romance novel disguised as a YA adventure-intrigue-mystery novel. Grr.

My annoyance escalates when, in the first scene where the main character (Er.. name name.. what was her name…? Mary Quinn? Ha ha! It totally was. Okay.) The first scene where Mary Sue Quinn and Hunky McDreamy are together, the point of view completely breaks down. Utter failure. It was his point of view, but then we get one of her thoughts. And that’s not a fluke. Because the entwined confusing points of view recur every time they’re later in a scene together.

So now I’m just ready for this book to be over with so I can write my review full of annoyance about it. But I’m not even halfway through. Fortunately it’s not a slog. And it’s not a long read. It’s just not a particularly interesting one either.

Then, ladies and gentlebeings of other genders, then we learn something about Mary Sue’s past that she knew all along. No, dude. No. You don’t get to hide something that important from us. If it was first person, sure. But it’s third person and we’re inside her head. The author should not be keeping that sort of secret from us. It’s just wrong.

And, yes, it does make the whole story a little more interesting from that point on, but I’m still beyond annoyed and into mad now. And while I’m reading, in the back of my mind I’m thinking.. if I say this in my review, is it a spoiler? When I firmly believe it should have been revealed in the first chapter? Hrrrm. Am I complicit in hiding it from other readers by not mentioning it? Well.. now you’re warned at least. And if you care to know, probably the second book in the series says it right in the summary.

So the next thing that happens is Mary Sue Q does the unforgiveable. She receives some deeply important information about her past. And she doesn’t read it. And she doesn’t take it with her. Why? I have no idea. You’d think she’d have plenty of hiding places in her dress. It’s not like it’s a steamy romance novel and McDreamy was going to rip it off of her in the next scene.

So, la la la.. plot, bickering, plot, flirting, plot, standard dialog you’d find from two love interests who don’t get along at first, maybe plot or something. And then it’s all over. The end.

Except it’s not. Because there are loose ends.

But there’s no way I’m reading the next book to see if they’re tied up!

And now I feel remorse. I feel I was too harsh on it. So let me soften the blow at the end here. It does try to say some things about gender. Women can be spies. Women make good spies, even. Women can be political and business minded. Women can be bad guys too. And Victorian London kind of sucked. Especially with the smelly Thames.

I really do like the cover. Kudos to the publisher on that. It’s subtle (to my eyes), but there.

And, I don’t know, maybe the series improves. But there’s not enough in this book to compel me to brave it.

—

Fun Fact: The first paragraph involves urine. Nice way to get teen girls to just jump into your story, isn’t it?

J’s Take on The Science of Doctor Who

Because when you can capitalize on a media sensation without breaking copyright laws, why shouldn’t you? The Science of Doctor Who takes the science and quasi-science and pseudo-science you can find in Doctor Who and compares it to the state of real world science (and techology).

I never found it so dull that I wanted to completely stop reading it, but I didn’t find it fascinating or captivating for the most part. A lot of the science that was included were things I already knew, or studies I’d already heard of. Some of it was new, but already I couldn’t call up one example of it.

At times, he got so deeply involved in explaining some scientific concept that he’d go for pages without even mentioning Doctor Who.

It also seemed to me that he kept referring to the same episodes. He’s really keen on “The Empty Child” and “The Doctor Dances”, using them for all sorts of examples of things. And most of the older Who episodes he mentioned were ones I’d seen or heard of, because they were released on DVD. Which started to make me wonder if he’d really watched all the Who he could possibly watch, or only hit the highlights.

Right at the start, it says the book has been updated up until the Eleventh Doctor. But don’t expect a lot of updates. Ten doesn’t even get much action. And right in the first chapter, the first paragraph even, he says we don’t know if the doctor has a family. Apart from calling a girl his granddaughter in the first series. Well, we all know there’s more family than that!

Where I really took objection to what he was saying though was in regards to Jack Harkness. He says in the future everyone’s bi and then blithers on about not having to reproduce in the traditional manner, so being straight is no longer biologically necessary. Or something. But Jack is not bi, because he doesn’t limit himself to two genders, or even to humans. And the kiss he and the Doctor shared is a not a ‘gay kiss’. Because neither of them is gay!

Oh, oh, and then he talks about this idea that this female scientist had that.. wow, the Doctor could regenerate as a woman! And he thought it’d blow our minds a little if the Doctor were transgender. I think it was him that had his mind blown when she mentioned the idea.

Back to the science.. I don’t know how many explanations I’ve read now about the theory of relativity and gravity and time and the speed of light. I don’t pretend that I understand it fully, but I’m not really eager to read about it anymore. I think that sort of thing is better demonstrated with video. Not little graphics and text written by a non-scientist.

I wish there had been more Dr. Who images in the book. Or like.. anything. I think one picture might’ve featured the TARDIS. I guess they didn’t want to pay any licensing fees. But it made the graphics that were included all the more boring to look at.

Well, that all made me sound rather down on the book. But overall it wasn’t bad. It wasn’t a slog. If you like Doctor Who and want to learn about cutting edge science, go for it. If you just want to get your geek on, probably Chicks Who Dig Time Lords is a more interesting read. And if you’re looking for science, go for Michio Kaku or Neil deGrasse Tyson.

A Spy in the House (Y.S. Lee)

The Plot

The orphaned Mary Lang’s nascent crime spree was halted abruptly when she was caught in the act. Sentenced to hang for her behavior, the twelve year old was instead spirited away to Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls and educated to the point where she could make an independent living for herself by non-illegal means. Now aged seventeen and going by the name of Mary Quinn, she finds herself asked to join a group associated with the school: The Agency. An intelligence gathering operation, The Agency might be able to provide Mary with the sort of purposeful and stimulating life she craves. She soon finds herself sent out on her very first assignment, to report upon the suspected criminal activity of Henry Thorold while posing as the paid companion of his daughter Angelica.

My Thoughts
We’re first introduced to Mary Lang at the tender age of twelve, as she stands in the dock to hear her sentence of death by hanging. Mary, orphaned after the death of her mother and the disappearance (and supposed death) of her father, has been scraping by Oliver Twist-style by means of petty thievery. She was caught after graduating to housebreaking and her short career – and life – seems to be at an end. But that would be a very short book indeed, so instead Mary finds herself abducted from the prison yard and given the opportunity to attend Miss Scrimshaw’s Academy for Girls.

The Academy is a place for girls of all stripes and backgrounds to gain the education with which to make their own way in the world. Not that there are many ways to make it as a woman in Victorian society. The story leaps past Mary’s school years in order to focus on a potential answer to this dilemma: how can a clever and educated woman with no background or influence make a real contribution to the world? In Mary’s case, opportunity presents itself in the form of an invitation to join “The Agency”, a sort of shadow companion institution to the school. The Agency, an intelligence gathering organization staffed by women, has managed to find itself a niche market by where it provides otherwise unobtainable information to the likes of Scotland Yard. Mary is eager to prove herself a top prospect as an agent, and after a brief period of training, she is sent out on her very first assignment.

After swiftly setting up the scene, it’s here in this middle section where the book bogs down a bit. Mary is hired by the Thorold family as the paid companion to their eighteen year old daughter Angelica. Mary’s been given little direction in her real assignment, which is to observe and report upon the household, in particular upon Henry Thorold (Angelica’s father), who is suspected of being a smuggler. Another agent, unseen and unnamed, has the primary responsibility for this case, and Mary’s task is just to provide supplemental information and evidence. Mary, barely trained and very inexperienced, flounders around uncertainly, unable to figure out what she’s supposed to do next. And while this is extremely realistic, this was definitely the least interesting portion of the book and at times I found myself really pushing to keep my attention focused.

Fortunately, the pace picks up again once Mary grows impatient do be doing something – anything! – and begins to make more active efforts to investigate. Though the sequence of events which leads to the climax and ultimate conclusion strain credulity a little, it’s still an enjoyable ride. Mary stays true to her character throughout and never ends up shunted aside even in the final act.

Though Mary’s assignment is resolved by the end of the book, there are quite a few plot threads left dangling unanswered. Not to mention a villain I’ll be very disappointed with if no further activity from them is seen. In other words, it’s clearly not the end of the story, just a good place to pause.

In Short
Y.S. Lee’s A Spy in the House manages to create a realistic and realistically flawed heroine in the character of Mary Quinn. The book itself isn’t perfect – the middle chapters were less engaging than the beginning and the end – but the pace was good and on top of the plot it managed to say a lot about the condition of women in Victorian England without going out of its way to be preachy (or teachy). I’ll definitely be picking up the rest of this series.