Back, then forward, then…
Bloomsbury, which put out the LIAR cover which substituted a white, fair-haired girl for the black, tomboyish protagonist, recently came under fire for doing basically the same thing all over again. This time the book is MAGIC UNDER GLASS, by Jaclyn Dolamore. The protagonist: brown-skinned. The girl on the cover: definitely not.
Bloomsbury has responded to the second round of outrage fairly quickly. The page for the book now has this notice: “Bloomsbury is ceasing to supply copies of the US edition of Magic Under Glass. The jacket design has caused offense and we apologize for our mistake. Copies of the book with a new jacket design will be available shortly.”
Which is great. It’s what they should do after-the-fact. But this shouldn’t be happening in the first place. This isn’t just a careless mistake, or the innocent result of the cover design being in the hands of those who haven’t necessarily read the book. Because it occurs in the context of inequality, and an industry in which the voices and stories of people of color, both fictional characters and flesh-and-blood authors, are already under-represented.
Ari of the blog Reading in Color wrote an open letter to Bloomsbury (and quite a bit else on the subject–which she rounds up in the latter half of this post). In her letter she says:
“Do you know how sad I feel when my middle school age sister tells me she would rather read a book about a white teen than a person of color because “we aren’t as pretty or interesting.” She doesn’t know the few books that do exist out there about people of color because publishing houses like yourself, don’t put people of color on the covers.”
This isn’t an issue of aesthetics or “accuracy.” It has real, profound consequences for all the anything-other-than-white young readers who look at the shelves and find that there’s no room for them there.
And while making a stink about these covers after the fact is important, and can result in appropriate action, there’s far more to be done. These mistakes need to be caught before they hit the shelves. Before they’re designed. And these rare stories and voices need to become a whole lot less rare–because before there can be representative covers, there need to be representative books.
It’s all been said before, and better, and by people whose voices are far more important than mine, but it remains important to say.
And once that new cover is issued, I’ll put my money where my mouth is.
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Title: LEVIATHAN
Author: Scott Westerfeld
Publisher: Simon Pulse
Year Published: 2009
Recommended: To anyone looking for light adventure and fun, and doesn’t run screaming in the other direction at the mention of steampunk.
Spoilers: Not really. I think.
My first exposure to this book was stumbling across the magnificent map that lies inside the covers (both front and back, which is good since the library tapes down the jacket and obscures about a third of each map, so you need to flip between them for the full effect). The countries of Europe are represented by either animals or machines, indicating their status as either Darwinists, who manipulate the ‘life threads’ of various species to create useful hybrids, or Clankers, who engineer great war machines. It’s Europe in the early days of WWI, if the British used giant hydrogen-filled whales and the Germans tromped around in the gears-and-steam versions of AT-STs. Continue reading ‘Review: LEVIATHAN by Scott Westerfeld’
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Review: ASH by Malinda Lo
Title: ASH
Author: Malinda Lo
Publisher: Little, Brown
Year Published: 2009
Recommended: To those who are intrigued by the idea. It’s a lovely but simple story, and while I enjoyed reading it I’m not sure I’ll remember much about it.
Spoilers: Technically yes, but it’s a hard book to spoil if you know the basic premise and the source tale.
I have a bit of an obsession with fairy tales. I used to read the various fairy-tale collections (Grimm, Anderson, Andrew Lang’s fairy books) and still return to them every so often. The various re-tellings and re-imaginings of these stories fascinate me, even if I end up hating them. So when I saw ASH spotlighted on several blogs, I had to give it a read.
In many ways Lo has stuck to the original story quite faithfully. Reading about the loss of Ash’s parents and how she came to live under the thumb of her step-mother was familiar, but Lo’s prose is beautiful and her world much richer than the traditional story. In ASH, fairies are real, and dangerous—but for Ash, irresistible. The fairies were the most intriguing part of ASH for me, and I wished they had a more prominent role. They supply, of course, the fairy godmother, in this telling a beautiful male fairy who falls in love with Ash. His love, though, is distant, and perhaps because it is unfamiliar to him, he doesn’t express it in any clear way. He never came alive for me, and remained the least interesting of all the magic in the book. He gives Ash her gifts, but I was more interested in the wild hunts and revels that Ash stumbles across. In the end, I felt that the fairies should have been far more prominent. They have an instrumental role in the story, but because they seemed separate from the rest of the events, in their own world, it felt off to have them/him have such an impact.
Apart from the nature of fairies, ASH’s big departure from the traditional tale is the romance. Ash never desires the prince—instead, she is drawn to the king’s Huntress. This “twist” is stated very up-front in most of the blurbs and interviews I’ve seen, so I was expecting it. I think perhaps had it been a surprise it would have had more impact. As it was, I didn’t buy the romantic tension between the two of them, perhaps because Ash is an exceedingly quiet character. She often felt purposeless, drawn from place to place and person to person. The romance and its ultimate conclusion were sweet, but they didn’t seem real.
I wanted to love this book. Certainly the prose is beautiful, and at times I was delighted by the way Lo brought the fairies into her world, but in the end none of the pieces quite came together. There seemed to be two stories: the story of Ash and the Huntress, and the story of Ash and the fairies. They could have been woven together, but instead they seemed firmly divided, and that robbed depth from the story.
I find I don’t have a great deal to say about the book; there isn’t much to object to, but there isn’t a great deal that shines. I’m glad I read it, and would certainly recommend it to anyone who is intrigued by the idea, but I’m not sure it’s a book I’ll remember much.
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Note: This is a review I wrote quite some time ago (more than a year) but it was buried in my personal journal and I didn’t want to lose it. So here it is.
Title: The Stolen Child
Author: Keith Donahue
Publisher: Anchor
Year published: 2007
Spoilers: A few.
Recommended: It’s been a long while since I read it, but I can’t imagine giving this book as a gift. It’s certainly not a book to avoid, but nor is it a book to seek out.
Back when I was working at Borders, I picked up this book off the free shelf in the back room. I probably wouldn’t have bought it otherwise, despite my affection for modern takes on the world of the fey (Holly Black and Emma Bull are to be blamed for this). It’s marketed as a literary novel, which makes a certain amount of sense–despite the fact that the two main characters are a changeling and the boy the changeling displaced, there is almost nothing magical about this story, and that was the major failing for me.
Continue reading ‘Review: The Stolen Child by Keith Donahue’
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Title: Truly, Madly
Author: Heather Webber
Publisher: St Martin’s Press
Year Published: 2010 (will release in February)
Spoilers: A few non-specific ones.
Recommended: This is what I would call a “popcorn book.” It’s fun to read, but it won’t stay with you and doesn’t have a lot of substance–and if you dine exclusively on its ilk you’ll probably get scurvy. If that’s what you’re in the mood for, go for it.
I received this book through Library Thing’s early reviewer program and read it over the holidays. It doesn’t release until the beginning of February, but if I don’t write this now I’ll forget everything about the book. If you know me at all you know this isn’t exactly my typical genre, and I wouldn’t have read it if it hadn’t been free. I did enjoy it, but I also probably wouldn’t be reviewing it if not for the program, since I don’t have a whole ton to say.
The basic premise is that Lucy Valentine is the latest in a long line of matchmakers who operate by matching auras. Lucy, though, doesn’t see auras. Instead, she can find lost objects. But when a scandal forces her father to take an extended vacation, she gets handed control of the matchmaking agency her family runs. Within her first few hours on the job she stumbles onto a murder mystery and a possible soulmate.
Continue reading ‘Review: Truly, Madly by Heather Webber’
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Year of Books in Review
This year, I read 106 books that I remembered to write down. It’s possible there are a couple more, especially since I started keeping track in late February. There were great books, good books, books I’ve already forgotten about and was surprised to find on the list, and books that I hated so much I could froth at the mouth for an hour ranting about them (and probably have). Since my original goal was to read 50 books, I’d call this a successful year. In the next year I’ve already stated that I want to read more of a variety in terms of genre. In terms of numbers, I’m going to move the bar down to 75, since I’m going to have a more intense schoolwork load and I need to write more often. Now I just have to figure out what my first book of 2010 is going to be. Below the cut are the stand-out books (for good or ill) of the year, and at the bottom is the full list of books I’ve read this year.
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Title: Graffiti Girl
Author: Kelly Parra
Publisher: MTV
Year published: 2007
Spoilers: Yes, many.
Recommended: This is a tough one. I think a younger reader (someone who’s actually in the YA bracket), especially one who’s hungry for Latino stories & protagonists, stories about artists, or unusual coming-of-age tales would enjoy this, but it really didn’t work for me, so I have a hard time endorsing it whole-heartedly.
I read quite a bit of YA. Most of it (fine, almost all of it) is speculative fiction, and my experience has been that the vast majority of what I’ve read has appeal beyond the target age range. Part of this may be because I get my recommendations from adults and one extremely precocious 16-year-old.
GRAFFITI GIRL is the first YA novel I’ve tackled that makes me feel like I’m reading “below my age.” It’s not a bad novel by any means. It has a lot going for it. The main character, Angel, is an interesting young woman. She’s an artist, not a great student, romantically inexperienced, and equal parts tough and insecure.
One of her most defining features is her pride in Latino culture, which is wonderful to see. I think that her unwavering pride and determination to incorporate her culture into her art is one of the great strengths of the book. However, many elements of Angel’s character often felt forced; we were told they existed, sometimes repeatedly, but they weren’t dramatized.
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Title: LIAR
Author: Justine Larbalestier
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Year published: 2009
Recommended: Yes, to just about everyone, with the warning that you’ll end up with many questions and no clear answers at the end—but that’s the point.
Spoilers: No, and you should avoid them at all costs.
Like many others, I first heard of this book because of the controversy surrounding its cover. I won’t go into that for lack of space and eloquence, but you can (and should) read about it here and here. I have read a little bit of Larbalestier’s nonfiction, and I’ve link-surfed over to her blog on multiple occasions, so after seeing this cover a few too many times out of the corner of my eye, I went ahead and put a hold on it at the library.
Since it’s a new YA book, that meant I was the seventy-somethingth person in line. (This may make it hard for me to get instant gratification, but it’s a highly encouraging sign as far as I’m concerned—kids! Reading! Shock!) I waited long enough that I’d forgotten about it when it popped up, and it happened to arrive at my library the weekend before two major papers were due. Thus: no time to read.
Except when I’m in bed anyway, and my brain is fried. I made the mistake of starting LIAR late on Saturday night. I work on Sunday mornings, or I probably would have been up into the wee hours finishing it. LIAR is, quite simply, a joy to read.
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Things not to buy for Christmas.
Dockers has rolled out this new advertising campaign:
I’ll give you a moment to read through the whole thing. Now, I can’t be the only one who has a hard time thinking of khakis as rugged and manly, and I’m even willing to go as far as to say that this might have been intended to be humorous. But the Dockers “man-ifesto” isn’t funny. It’s just tired misogynist blathering. I don’t really have the energy to pick this apart, but if you really don’t see why this is problematic, I’ll give it a shot.
Or better yet, check out this explanation.
The basic idea being: “tongue-in-cheek” is not an excuse for being sexist.
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Title: Beggars in Spain
Author: Nancy Kress
Publisher: Eos
Year Published: 1993; my edition, 2004
Other Info: The original novella won the Hugo and Nebula awards.
Spoilers: Some; the major one preceded with a warning.
Recommended: Yes, if you like your science fiction with some crunchy biology and political philosophy, wrapped in major world events, dipped in family dysfunction, with a light sprinkling of character-driven plottiness (technical term).
I read this book for two reasons. The first is that I haven’t read a whole lot of Kress’ fiction, but I love her how-to writing advice, and I wanted to see how that filters into her fiction. I had read one of Kress’ other novels, but I didn’t enjoy it, and figured this was the place to try again if I was to ever get into her novel-length work. The second reason was that PLP* Caroline has very different tastes than I do when it comes to science fiction, and I suspected this would be something she would enjoy, but didn’t want to recommend it until I’d read it myself.
The verdict? I’m glad I talked myself into reading this.
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Tags: liked it, nancy kress, reviews, science fiction
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