Lesson 3

Invincible Summer
by Hannah Moskowitz
Simon Pulse, 2011
269 pages

So many times, this book carried me right to the brink of LOVING it, but never quite managed it, and I'm sad to say that by the time I finished, it had failed to even make me like it.  I really wanted to do so, too, because there were aspects of the story that I thought were awesome, and a couple of characters that I really liked, but in the end, this novel just set my teeth on edge, like fingernails scratching on a chalkboard. *sigh*

It is the story of two families who own adjacent summer beach houses and spend their summer vacations there together each year. Though we get little hints and reminiscences of summers when the older children of each family were small and the younger ones hadn't even been thought of yet, the story doesn't begin until just before the narrator-protagonist's 15th birthday. The entire book consists solely of the stories of that and the following three summers, the interactions of various family members and between several members of the two different families.

It's difficult to fully explain my disappointment with this book without striking out into the treacherous waters of SPOILERS, so I will simply say that [A] I thought one of my favorite characters deserved a MUCH better outcome than they got, and [B] I felt that this book conveys some VERY disturbing messages to and about women, especially those who are high-school and college-aged. While I absolutely do not believe in censorship or banning books, I really think that any teens who read this book really need some extensive parental guidance and discussion while they do so.

One thing that I really DID love about the book was the way that three of the characters bonded over the writings of one author whose works have now become classics. If you've ever had that kind of experience, you'll know for yourself how it can happen and what an extraordinary feeling it engenders. When something truly inspires, the reader can spend months or even years engrossed in a single author's oeuvre and worldview. Even when you finally outgrow it, or your first passion for it cools a bit because new pieces constantly extend your horizons still further, there is always a certain attachment, a certain frisson of the old excitment and ardor whenever the book, poem, essay, or author is mentioned.

This bibliomaniac obsession with a newly-discovered author was the part of the book that I most enjoyed and with which I could be identify and empathize BY FAR, and it is one of the strongest and longest-running themes in the novel (hence my hopes throughout that I would end up liking the work much more than I ultimately did). Invincible Summer actually made me WILDLY curious to investigate the writings of the narrator's muse, and that in itself makes reading this book time well-spent, in my opinion. Unfortunately, however, I cannot in all honesty actually recommend this book.

Review of "On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God"

On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God

by Louise Rennison

This entire series of books is absolute nonsense, and the only reason to read them is because they're hilarious and fun.  They're full of a whole bunch of total nothing, just the everyday sorts of things that can happen to poor, unsuspecting teenage girls as they go about their everyday lives, with the added joy of British English mixed in to complete my happiness.  Georgia, the main character, is obnoxious to her parents to a level that I could never stand even when I WAS a teenager, let alone now that I've become a parent, but I've known real kids who were even worse, so at least it's authentic.

HOWEVER, I didn't like this second installment nearly as well as I did the first, for the very reason that the strong points of the series faltered and the flaws got seriously magnified.  Quite improbable and unrealistic things started happening, and Georgia's bad attitude achieved new levels of annoyance.  Her parents set her such a bad example of behavior that I couldn't totally blame her, though, and before it was over I was pretty much tired of everybody but the cat and Georgia's baby sister, Libby, who is by far my favorite character in the entire series.

So, this one was kind of a dud.  But, I had to read it, anyway, so that I'd know what was going on in the next one, and because it was part of one of my reading challenges.  That somewhat disagreeable task over with, we can now move on to other things.

Review of "13 Little Blue Envelopes"

All right, self!  It's time for us to "man up," as it were, and catch up on this ridiculously mounting backlog of reviews!  No more slacking--I'm a book blogger, for goodness sake!

Anyway, I must confess that the book I'm going to review today helped cause this backlog to begin with, because I was somewhat dreading reviewing it.  So many YA afficionados have adored this book, gushed and raved about it, that having to say that I expected much more from it didn't sound like much fun.  In other words, avoiding this review for over a month is far long enough, so on with the truth-telling.

13 Little Blue Envelopes

by Maureen Johnson

Virginia Blackstone's Bohemian, free-spirited, artist aunt dies young of cancer, leaving an incredibly convoluted and cooky sort of will for her niece that "Ginny" must follow, in the form of 13 envelopes that must be opened in a specific order and under very specific conditions.  Can anyone think of some cliches we've left out? Let us know, and we'll try to work them into the next edition of the book.

The concept of the envelopes themselves was fairly innovative, and I was really hoping for greatness from this book.  Instead, the envelopes' contents led Ginny on a series of disastrous Europen experiences that I mostly found annoying.  If I'd gone through chaos like this girl endured, I'd probably refuse to ever set foot outside my own apartment again!

Don't get me wrong; I'm certainly not saying that this book was awful.  I've read much, MUCH worse books in a wide variety of genres, and it did manage (barely) to keep me interested enough that I finished it.  Still, it was highly improbable, at times quite predictable, and frankly mediocre.  The most interesting characters and events were never developed, and it just didn't seem to coalesce into a single, unified book.  Sorry, gang; this one just wasn't for me.

Review of "Pytheas"

And now I attempt the monumental task of catching up on my review back-log.  Wish me luck, everybody!

The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek

by Barry Cunliffe

Have you ever read a book that was interesting and actually quite dull simultaneously?!  Neither had I, until I read this one, and don't ask me how it managed such a thing, because I'm still puzzling over it.  I only know it's the case.

The story of this non-fiction work in a nutshell: in the mists of time B.C., a Greek scholar named Pytheas set off to explore the seas beyond his own Mediterranean, which was quite a daring project at a time when the entire world seemed to lay on the inner side of the Straits of Gibraltar.  He kept a record of his adventures, and from the best guesses of modern academics, he made it as far as Britain and maybe even Iceland.  The only draw back is that his own written account is no longer extant; we only know anything about Pytheas through quotes from other, later Greco-Roman authors.

This snag is where we hit the first rocky shoals of boredom.  If the original book were intact and available to us, scholars like Barry Cunliffe could do what scholars often do with texts like that--insult our intelligence a bit by assuming that we'll never read the original or wouldn't understand it if we did, but in the process create a shorter, more entertaining recap of the original that WOULD, after all, save us the bother of having to read it.  Since that's not possible here, however, what Cunliffe must do instead is craft a long-winded introduction to the world from which Pytheas came, the identities of the men who quoted him, and finally, what guesses we can make about where exactly he traveled and when, based on the clues contained in these second- and sometimes third-hand accounts.

The book manages to be interesting AND boring in that many of the individual facts are truly fascinating--for example, did you know that the "French" city of Marseilles was founded as an ancient Greek colony on the shores of what was then a very fractured landscape full of Frankish and other tribes?!  I certainly didn't--yet those interesting facts never coalesce into a solid, interesting BOOK.  It's a shame, really.  I wanted to enjoy this more than I did.  If you're really interested in some of the elements of the tale, like ancient Greek trade, the earliest existing accounts of ancient Britain, or tales of intrepid explorers from every era, then it's worth it to go ahead and wade through this one.  If not, I really suggest you stick to lighter fare.