My True Love Gave to Me edited by Stephanie Perkins

'Tis the season!  Well, almost and I am so glad that My True Love Gave to Me edited by Stephanie Perkins came in at the library for me just as the holidays are getting underway.  I don't usually read short story collections because, to be honest, I haven't seen a lot of them that really jump out at me.  A few months ago I saw that this collection of holiday themed stories written by some of the most well know authors of YA fiction was being released and I put myself on the library reserve list before they even had any copies.  I have really enjoyed reading Stephanie Perkins' books as well as those of several of the other authors included in this collection.  I was not disappointed in this book, either.

Rainbow Rowell writes about midnights on New Year's Eve spanning several years and falling in love with someone unexpected.  Kelly Link writes a tale with a fantasy element involving someone she meets only when it snows.  Matt de la Pena shakes things up by writing from the male perspective about a Christmas break trapped by a blizzard in an apartment with a cat.  Oh, and the cute girl upstairs.  Jenny Han gives us a story not unlike the movie, Elf, only what if the orphan Santa brought to the North Pole were a girl?  Stephanie Perkins tells about a young woman determined to somehow get a Christmas tree into her moving-boxes-stuffed apartment and the Christmas tree salesman who helps her.  Holly Black spins a yarn truly original about a New Year's Eve party visited by the boy of one girl's dreams.  Gayle Forman gives us a funny story about a young Jewish girl spending her first Hanukkah at college in a town very unused to people  who celebrate Hanukkah or people from New Jersey or people who use sarcasm.  Myra McEntire also bucks tradition by making her main character a teenage boy and this one is quite a trouble maker.  Kiersten White sets her story in a diner in the very small town of Christmas, CA, where the new cook seems to have a magic all his own.  Ally Carter starts off her tale with a young woman switching airplane tickets with a stranger in Chicago's O'Hare airport and ending up in exactly the place she needs to be.  There were two other stories that I tried to read, but couldn't get into.

Overall, I had a great time reading these quick stories.  I'm even more excited for the next month and a half with all of the fun and magic of the holidays.  Some people find this time of year difficult to get into a book because so much of their attention is required with all of the chores and activities leading up to Christmas.  This collection is the perfect solution.  The stories are short, fun and they will still give you a shot of good cheer.

Requiem by Lauren Oliver

And in the final installment of the  Delirium trilogy, Requiem by Lauren Oliver is a captivating end to a strong series.  Again, since this post refers to the third book in the series, there may be spoilers for the first two books below.

Where the first book in the series was all about Lena's present, the second book bounced back and forth between her early months in the Wilds and her time working with the resistance.  This final book changes again by shifting between Lena's perspective and her best friend from before, Hana's.  Lena is still out in the Wilds, working with the resistance and Hana is still back in the city.  Hana has had her procedure and is about to be married to the new mayor.  She has concerns about whether or not the cure was entirely successful.  She has begun remembering Lena and their time as friends.

I can admit, now, that I must have loved Lena.  Not in an Unnatural way, but my feelings for her must have been a kind of sickness.  How can someone have the power to shatter you to dust- and also to make you feel so whole?

Lena and her group of friends are searching for a way to fight back and regain control over their lives.

We wanted the freedom to love, and instead we have been turned into fighters.

A revolution is planned and those with nothing to lose are a dangerous society.  This is a very exciting, action-packed conclusion.  I really liked this series, but I will say I really wish the author had included an epilogue.  The ending felt a bit rushed and the copy I read had excerpts from two of the author's other books which fooled me into thinking there were a few chapters remaining.  That always makes me a little crazy.  I would recommend this series.  It really kept my attention and it was difficult to set aside.  I will definitely be reading more from Lauren Oliver.

Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver

Pandemonium by Lauren Oliver is the second book in the Delirium series.  As such, this post is likely to have spoilers for the first book so reader beware.

As we begin Pandemonium, Lena has escaped into the Wilds:

I run, and when I can no longer run, I limp, and when I can't do that, I crawl, inch by inch, digging my fingernails into the soil, like a worm sliding across the overgrown surface of this strange new wilderness.

Lena is alone and dying on the forest floor when she is found by Raven.  Raven takes Lena back to her homestead, a basement she has discovered buried under the ruins of a bombed-out building.  There, Lena is allowed to recover from her injuries and be fed, but it isn't long before she is expected to help.  Lena is surprised to find that the people who live in the Wilds aren't what she has always been taught they would be.  They are kind and they do the best they can; they work together to survive.  Eventually, Lena, Raven and Tack, another new friend, join the resistance to fight against the government that has forced them to live outside civilization.

In the spirit of Hunger Games, Lena is much like Katniss in that she becomes strong when her only other choice is to die.  This isn't one of those obnoxious books where the main character is a weak, simpering young girl dependent upon those around her.  Lena learns quickly and becomes quite a leader.  I mentioned in my post about Delirium that I enjoyed that this book is set in a world not unlike our own.  In this second installment this is expressed even further in that the challenges Lena and her friends face in the Wilds are much like those any of us would face if we were to suddenly be left with nothing but the clothes on our backs.  Survival in the Wilds means hunting, scavenging for shelter and supplies and staying alive from one day to the next.  Occasionally they are confronted by other people from the Wilds that are intent upon causing destruction and they are always watching for government regulators who have come in to the Wilds looking to exterminate the "Invalids".  That is what I like- there are no monsters, no supernatural forces at work.  They are fighting for their lives mostly against nature.  It is refreshing in a literary pool full of the former.

As a rule, the second book in a trilogy tends to be more of a bridge connecting the beginning of the story in the first book to the end in the last, but in this case, I felt like Pandemonium really held its own.  And now my favorite quote from this book:

But forbidden books are so much more.  Some of them are webs; you can feel your way along their threads, but just barely, into strange and dark corners.  Some of them are balloons bobbing up through the sky: totally self-contained, and unreachable, but beautiful to watch.
And some of them- the best ones- are doors.

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

I have been wanting to read Lauren Oliver since I saw the cover for Before I Fall, but it just hadn't happened yet.  Luckily for me, I saw Delirium and the rest of its trilogy on my sister's bookshelf and she agreed to let me borrow them.  Delirium is based in an alternate reality set in our present time.  In this world, love is considered a disease and the cause for all that ails the world.  Scientists have discovered a cure which is administered to each person shortly after he or she turns eighteen.  Many people would like the cure to be available at a much younger age, but the side effects are too severe in children.

Lena is counting down the days until she can receive the cure.  All her life she has been told that amor deliria nervosa "affects your mind so that you cannot think clearly, or make rational decisions about your own well-being" and that the cure will keep her "safe, and free from pain".  Love is a deadly disease and the scientists have discovered that what was once called stress, heart disease, anxiety, depression, hypertension, insomnia, bipolar disorder and more were really only symptoms of the deliria.  When Lean falls in love with a boy, at first she resists the idea of changing her plans to be cured.  As the days continue, however, she realizes that she cannot give him up.  Eventually she decides that she would rather die than be cured and they plan their escape.

One thing that I find compelling in this series is that this isn't some post-apocalyptic world far in the future as so many books of this type seem to be.  This is a world in which scientific discovery and politics have conspired to create a new regime.  At the time that this story begins, this new order has been in place for so long that no one remembers what life was like before the cure.  The government's propaganda and strict laws with unendurable punishments keep people from asking questions or knowing anything beyond what they are taught to believe.  Anyone who shows any tendency toward disagreement is considered infected and arrested and locked away for life or executed.  Beyond the walls of the city are the Wilds that the government has claimed to have "sanitized", but that are rumored to be filled with terrible creatures called "Invalids"- people living without the cure.

Living without love is so incomprehensible to me and I think that is what makes this book so interesting.  A world destroyed by nuclear war or climate change or some other kind of catastrophe is somewhat expected in dystopian literature by this point.  The removal of love from society, however, offers a completely new angle.  As a mother, I can't help but wonder how one would be able to parent without love.  Loving our children is what motivates parents to care for them as infants and beyond.  It is why exhausted new mothers continue to wake every hour or two to feed and care for their children.  At one point in the book, Lena recalls being a small child and falling down and getting hurt.  When her mother comforts her as she cries another mother chastises her and tells her she should be ashamed of herself.  Comfort is a symptom of the disease.

I feel that Oliver has done a masterful job of creating a full environment, bringing in details that drive home life under totalitarian rule.  I also loved that each chapter is headed with a quote either from The Safety, Health, and Happiness Handbook or The Book of Shhh or from some other form of government literature.  They lend even further texture to the world she has designed.

I'll leave you with this passage about Lena's older sister:

Even then she refused the procedure and the comfort it would give her, and on the day the cure was to be administered it took four scientists and several needles full of tranquilizer before she would submit, before she would stop scratching with her long, sharp nails, which had gone uncut for weeks, and screaming and cursing and calling for Thomas.  I watched them come for her, to bring her to the labs; I sat in a corner, terrified, while she spit and hissed and kicked, and I thought of my mom and dad.
That afternoon, thought I was still more than a decade away from safety, I began to count the months until my procedure.

Hello from the Gillespies by Monica McInerney

The holiday season is not far away and so the flood of Christmas letters and Christmas cards will soon be upon us.  Have you ever read those Christmas letters and wondered how much of it resembled reality?  Well, in Hello from the Gillespies by Monica McInerney we learn what happens when someone actually tells the truth.  Angela Gillespie has been sending out her annual Christmas letter on December 1st since she first married over thirty years ago.  It has been a rough year and she is having a difficult time putting a positive spin on life.  Some impulse takes over and she begins typing what is really happening in her family:  Her husband has grown distant since their sheep station (like a ranch) began to fail, her daughters are struggling to come into adulthood and her ten-year-old is still holding on to his imaginary friend.  She doesn't mean to let all the details of their lives spill out, but she does.  She only meant to get it out of her head and then delete it all and start over until a family emergency keeps her from taking care of it and it accidentally gets sent out to over one hundred people on her mailing list.

I was cringing even as I was laughing about such an error, perhaps because it sounds like something I would do.  When I began this book, I thought it would be a funny book with a bit of family drama.  I was surprised when it took turns that took the reader much deeper into this family's lives and concerns.  The sheep station in rural Australia has been suffering for years due to drought.  The oldest daughters, twins, have moved far from home, one to Sydney and the other all the way to New York City.  The youngest daughter is struggling to find her place in the world and has bounced from one job to the next.  The young son has run away three times from the boarding school to which he has been sent.  And Angela is feeling lost in herself, in her mid-fifties and unsure about what is next for her.  When the family is all suddenly drawn back home, they are forced to face issues and work together.

I really enjoyed this book and I can't tell you how many times I laughed out loud.  The characters were all fully formed and wonderful.  I especially loved Angela's best friend Joan.  I would love to have a friend just like her.  And oh, how I'd love to hear all the stories Genevieve has to tell.  The descriptions of the setting had me looking at travel websites.  I would love to go.  Angela hosts guests on the station and that made me even consider leaving the beach!  This was a fun book to read without being too light.  I totally recommend you read this in place of all those phony letters with holiday borders you'll soon be getting in the mail.

Sweet As Cane, Salty As Tears by Ken Wheaton

At fifty-years-old, Katherine is doing pretty well for herself in New York.  She has a successful job working for an advertising magazine, she has a sizable nest egg in the bank, and she spends her vacation time in far flung parts of the world seeing more than she ever imagined she could.  While not perfect, this is the life she has lived for the last thirty years since she sought refuge on a Greyhound bus headed as far from her country Cajun childhood as she could get.  When a family tragedy calls her back home, she has to face her past in a way she has studiously and pharmaceutically avoided for decades.

I had a good feeling about Sweet As Cane, Salty As Tears by Ken Wheaton when I read the Author's Note at the beginning of the book:  

A note about the word "yall."  While most consider y'all a contraction of you all, I consider it one word and treat it thusly.  Please indulge one person's crazy mission to change the language.

Having been born and raised in Texas, it mystifies me that the rest of the country doesn't take advantage of this wonderful word.  It is so concise.  It makes so much more sense that attempting to make the word "you" stand in for both the singular and the plural.  "You" is the singular, "Y'all" is the plural, and, if you really want to push it, "All y'all" is the multiple plural.  I have never, however, used "y'all" in the singular.  Some people do, but not me.  But back to Ken Wheaton and his use of this and other words and phrases that might need a little explanation.  On his blog, he provides a list that he refers to as "Talkin' Funny: Louisiana Style.  You can read those here and here.

As Katherine is pulled back into seeing her family- pulled because she dreads going- she must face her past mistakes and the tragedy that propelled her from home.  Raised with three sisters and two brothers, it is a large family to whom she is returning.  There are her siblings, their spouses and ex-spouses, as well as their children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.  In a time and place where teen pregnancy was common, there are fewer years between the generations.  One complaint I had about the first half of this book was the difficulty I had keeping the sisters straight.  They are named Karla- Jean, Kendra-Sue, Katie-Lee (Katherine), and Karen-Anne.  This added to the overall feeling of the book, but it did take me a little while to remember who each one was.  Part of this confusion, especially when it comes to meeting all of the extended family, may have been intentional as Katherine herself has trouble remembering to whom each niece and nephew belong.

I enjoyed reading this book and it kept me turning the pages, but it was not a happy book to read.  There is a lot of sadness and dissatisfaction with life, but there is also the bond of family and it ends with hope.  And reading it left me with a craving for Popeye's chicken.

The Man in the Window by Jon Cohen

The Man in the Window by Jon Cohen features a cast of characters all living in one small town with a monster.  Of course, Louis isn't really a monster, but some of his neighbors have begun to think of him that way.  As a teenager, Louis was terribly burned in a fire that caused his face to become unrecognizable.  His mother and father, Atlas and Grace have spent the last sixteen years caring for him, but Louis has become a recluse.  He is never without his hat and purple scarf even at home and he almost never leaves the house.  Iris, a nurse that will soon be meeting Louis, thinks of herself as a kind of monster.  What most people would likely interpret as unattractive she deems repulsive, but she refuses to let it stop her.  She is a successful nurse and she enjoys her work.  She is fairly new to town, having moved into her father's home to care for him after the passing of her mother and so knows nothing of the man in the window.

I was really excited about this book for the first several chapters.  I hadn't gotten very far into it before I started thinking about who on my Christmas list needed to receive their own copy.  The book begins with Atlas's death.  It happens rather early so I hope that isn't too much of a spoiler for you.   One of the first things I loved so much about this book was that Gracie refused to provide "appropriate" clothing to the funeral director for her husband.  Instead she insisted her husband be dressed in his favorite clothes- "a flannel work shirt, a pair of corduroys thin at the knees, gray cotton socks, and an old pair of Hush Puppies."  When pressed about it Gracie had this to say:  "My husband, I guarantee you, Mr. Rose, does not wish to travel through eternity in a necktie and a pair of shiny shoes pressing on his bunions."  I adore that this character would think of such a thing.  She loved her husband so much that she didn't want him to be uncomfortable, even in death.   Reflecting on their marriage, Gracie recalled the many times Atlas would tell her, "Gracie, I hope to God I go before you do."  He simply could not stand to live without her by his side.  Gracie's response was "Atlas, neither of us is going to go.  They make special allowances for people like us."  I love that.

The storytelling in the first half of the book had me fascinated, but it languished in the middle.  It became slow and lost much of it's spark.  It always makes me sad when a book doesn't turn out to be as good as I had hoped it would be.  Just near the end, it picked up pace and I was able to enjoy it again, but it never did get back to what it was in the beginning.