Minnesota Reads

It’s pretty clear that my current obsession is dystopian fiction, but I recently stopped reading a handful of young adult dystopian novels. How could I read a book where love needs to be cured? Because, apparently, everything bad in our society (hate, war, etc.) is caused by love, so love is enemy number one. Please. Or a world where the dictator is a teenager? Come on. I know it’s young adult fiction so teenagers are the main characters, but in dystopian fiction I have to believe, at least a little bit, that our society could turn into the world you’re building.

But thankfully Scored by Lauren McLaughlin passed my test. I could see parents and administrators thinking that scoring teenagers, both their grades and their behaviors, to keep them in line would be a good thing. It’s SATs on crack.

In Lauren McLaughlin’s world, teenagers are under constant surveillance. Electronic “eyes,” little circular devices that are hung from ceilings, polls, wires, and trees, are placed all around the community, including in schools, parks, and businesses. These eyes follow the teenagers and everything they do affects their scores, and every month their scores are reevaluated with 100 being the highest they can receive.

High school senior Imani LeMonde has been in the 90s for awhile now, which means if she can keep her high score she will have a full ride for college, and she has to get a full ride because she is far from rich. But Imani’s world starts to crumble when her best friend, a girl in her 60s, starts having a relationship with an unscored.

There are unscored teenagers, the ones whose families rebelled against the scoring, hanging out with them is devastating. Even though Imani wasn’t hanging out with one, since her friend was, it reflects on her. She falls from a 90 to a 60.

Imani fully believes in the score and thinks it can better society, but not everyone agrees. Imani’s history teacher, who has tenure, is constantly questioning the scores, and so is an unscored rich guy in the same class. It’s not hard to tell that Imani’s score being dropped, and the influences around her, start making her ask questions about the scores. It also doesn’t hurt that the rich unscored guy in her class is pretty cute.

This was a really good story. It’s not too far fetched an idea that students start being put under surveillance, and it’s really easy to expect that people would rebel against such an idea. It’s also not too far fetched that many scored students would go along with the idea of shunning those who do not have a score as high as they do. Don’t we already, on some level, do this in our own lives? Is it so hard to imagine that if it were mandated that we wouldn’t fall in line?

So I could buy into the idea. I don’t think everything about it is fabulous, but I could buy into it. I could also buy into Imani and the interaction she has with the rich, unscored kid. They question each other, she gets mad at him for acting superior, they both start questioning what they believe, and along the way they start to have some feelings. It’s a futuristic Tony and Maria, minus the singing and dancing.

Scored was a good, quick read and it was believable enough for me get lost in the world McLaughlin built, and it made me appreciative of not having been scored as a teen. No way would I have been in the 90s. Drinking beer does not a 90 make.

One time someone told me in a really convincing and authoritative voice that as an English major, it is really bad form that I claimed no interest in history. “All literature is history,” or maybe “All history is literature,” this person said and I shrugged and imagined maps and capitols and dates that wars ended and began and bad guys, borders and good guys, red buttons and paperwork, and blah blah blah.

This has all sort of recently changed for me. I’m getting better at understanding the defining features of individual decades, both politically and artistically and especially fashion-wise. As this is all coming into focus, my fifth grade level of history knowledge. More and more every day I realize just how ignorant it sounds to say “I’m not interested in history,” which is not to say that “All literature is history” or vice versa isn’t a sort of pretentious way to chastise someone who simply isn’t into something.

This is where I blame dozens of teachers who pitched history while I was in school, each providing a dry list of names, dates, and locations. I remember raising my hand in fifth grade and basically saying to my teacher: “I don’t really understand war. So, the teams just get in a line opposite each other and start shooting?”

“Yes, pretty much,” he said, which wasn’t a satisfying answer to me then, and it really isn’t now. There were, of course, field trips to big buildings where men with briefcases explained how government works and pointed to portraits. But mostly field trips were just a chance to wrap a can of Dr. Pepper in tinfoil and worry about who your seat mate would be on the bus. Forget about college when I had to suddenly cram a history class into my schedule and the only one left was Ancient and reminded me of grainy movies that played on Sunday afternoons, men in loin cloths and flip flops brandishing swords.

Cut to Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation, a super readable, super entertaining, super funny series of road trips to even the most minute of landmarks tied to the assassination of presidents Lincoln, McKinley, and Garfield. Of all the geeky goodness. Vowell tours the land looking at chunks of brains, blood-stained tiles, visiting monuments and graves and considers the back history of the killers who were prompted by God or who otherwise assumed they would receive national glory for taking one for the team. And she pays homage to Lincoln’s son, who was either at the scene of the crime, or damn close, for each of these three murders. What a treat!

This thought actually came into my head when I finished the first hunk of the book: Aw, nuts, I’m not ready to stop reading about Lincoln’s assassination. But then there was James Garfield, done in by Charles Guiteau, renowned for being so unlikable that even when he joined a community of free love frolickers in upstate New York, he was unable to find a willing sexual partner. Vowell is a free-flow story teller who can explain the political climate at a certain latitude and longitude and then segue into which ironic T her traveling partner is wearing.

I’m not guaranteeing that I’m going to retain tons of what I read, but a few interesting facts here and there will come in handy as party tricks. Regardless, for the eight-ish hours it takes to read this book, Vowell had my full attention more than any other person who has attempted to spend eight-ish hours whispering history into my ear. I’m stoked to dig into her catalogue and see what other dead spots in my schooling that she can make interesting.

Book thirteen of the Dresden Files series opens six months after our hero, Harry Dresden, sinks into the water after being shot through the heart while on his brother’s boat. He had just murdered the woman he loved, saved his daughter, and wiped out the entire vampire Red Court. In order to pull all of this off, Dresden was forced to call in every favor and pull every string that he had – good or evil.

So, here we are in book thirteen, Ghost Story. Rest is not on the death agenda for Mr. Dresden. Instead he is shuffled into an “in between” where he meets his old friend Carmicheal – a man that worked with Murphy and was killed by werewolves – who greets Dresden and takes him to that big precinct in the sky… literally. Harry finds he has a choice. He can go back and wrap up the loose ends of his life; specifically, find out who murdered him. Or he can hang around in the “in between” and work with the other cops on various things like helping lost souls.

Harry decides to find out who murdered him and goes back to Chicago as a ghost – without magic and without the ability to communicate directly.

What he finds is chaos and pain. His decisions leading up to the assault and ultimately the destruction of the Red Court resulted in a power void that was quickly being filled by other unworldly terrors who were raging an all out war against humanity. His friends were all changed because of what happened – some grew stronger and some were losing themselves.

The lesson Harry is faced with is the consequences of his actions. Something he had never really given much thought to in the past. We are again reminded of how powerful Harry was and the respect he commanded, even though he never seemed to realize it.

For those that have read my Dresden Reviews in the past, you might remember two things:
1) I am a die-hard Harry Dresden fan; and
2) I absolutely hated the book previous to this one because Butcher chose to kill off my beloved Harry.

It was very difficult for me to finally pick up this book and read it. I wanted to be able to read it with a clear, objective mind set.

Folks, I did my best.

Overall, I did not like this book. It was not only a “shark jumper”, but it lacked cohesiveness and there were more than a fair share of moments when I just thought to myself “what the fuck is going on here?”
I knew who had killed him the second he died in Book 12 – it wasn’t a surprise. There was no suspense there for any true fan of the series who knows the characters. What did surprise me is who ordered his death. When that was revealed, it was an “ah-ha” moment and suddenly a few puzzle pieces clicked into place.

Butcher spends most of the novel having Harry run around peeking in on old friends – Murphy, Molly, Mort, Butters, etc. But, not a whole lot of time trying to figure out his murder. The whole epic battle at the end made no sense whatsoever and was just awkward and boring. It was frustrating how people that were intricate members of the entire series – like Murphy and Thomas – were not given the sort of focus they probably deserved in this novel which was supposed to read as a final farewell from the main character.

There are the implications that a higher power has a vested interest in Dresden that never quite makes sense. And of course, we have the meddling Winter Court that just can’t seem to go away. Don’t get me wrong – this series would struggle without the fae element, but come on. Not even in Summer Knight were we able to pull together anything that made sense with this particular story line and here it gets even more annoying.

There were a few shining stars in this book. Butcher really had the tears flowing in the beginning of the book when we were meeting dead characters from books past. And he did a nice job of interlacing smaller story lines and characters from his short stories into this book. There are a few really good moments created on the pages of the book – without a doubt.

Forcing Dresden to look at the impact that he had on his world and his friends also opened the door for the impact that his death had on people. It showed that the weak were strong because of his influence; and those that were strong, were weak because of his death. The consequences of his cowboy attitude on everything and everyone he held dear was made crystal clear and I think that moving forward, Dresden will be a better wizard because of it.

I truly wanted to say good things about this book. But, I can’t. This whole life lesson could have been done as a condensed part to a longer novel. I think having your hero come back as a ghost is a clever idea, but it wasn’t executed well and just fell short for me. Butcher is a phenomenal writer and I would read a phone directory if he wrote it. But, I think some reigns need to be pulled and rather than juggling balls because they look cool, he needs to go back to the basics of this series.

I don’t know what is going to grow out of this slash-and-burned storyline that we have after books 12 and 13, but I’m hopeful and confident.

That being said, I’ve heard a rumor of a new book in the series coming out next year. I am keeping my eye on that and hoping beyond hope that it is a step back in the right direction to the good ‘ol Harry Dresden that I know and love.

If I bit it today, the obit would say I was a writer who struggled to move beyond 2,000 word blog posts about what happened this past week at Subway. Survivors include the love of her life and two naughty kitties. If I cashed in at 22, it would say I was a college graduate who designed a nonprofit’s newsletter and reported the deets of high school tennis matches, both while wearing the clothes I slept in and bravely facing the shames of having negotiated last call at the Smiling Moose the previous night. At age 6, I was getting pretty good at coloring. The key was to trace the black lines of the picture with heavy-handed Crayon-ing, then to shade in the insides using the same color. Take that, Picasso. At 40-something, who knows.

Daytripper by twin brothers Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba is a nonlinear collection of stories about Bras de Oliva Domingos, whose mere birth is the stuff of family, if not urban, legends. He’s a traveler, a kite enthusiast, an obituary writer and eventually a novelist. He falls in love a few times, has a son, and has a crippling case of daddy issues. At the beginning of each of these stories, told with lovely full-color, super detailed imagery, Bras is dropped into a new adventure, each that will prove fatal by the end of the chapter. Stops off for a drink, gets shot. Visits his father’s study hours after the old man has kicked it and while his own son is sliding down the chute, keels over. Each chapter ends with a few words, a blurb from the obituary Bras would have at that point in his life.

Even as they all end the same, each story is a slice of life and includes small moments that are actually big and big moments that are especially big. Bras is a little ho-hum emo, living in the shadow of his father’s career in literature and taking it super personally, but otherwise likable. He is surrounded by a cast of quick-hit characters who make reappearances, including his sidekick Jorge (who comes to his own startling end) and his wife (with whom he almost has a meet-cute, if not for Bras getting snuffed on the way.

In the end, Bras becomes an old man, terminally ill, who finds some final words from his father that make everything clear: Only when you accept that one day you will die will you be able to let go and thoroughly enjoy life. This is a nice collection with plenty of dips and dives and dekes and great art.

“This is a story about madness.” So begins the delightful insanity of The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson. Ronson, a self-proclaimed sufferer of severe anxiety, admits that he is an odd choice for a renegade psychopath hunter, but his sense of humor and occasionally bizarre behavior make him perfect for the job of writing about it. He begins his quest after becoming involved in a curious mystery: a strange manuscript, sent to academics around the world, calling out to the universe’s most revered brains to crack its code.

Ronson’s attempt to solve the mystery eventually results in him investigating a variety of subjects, from Scientologists to asylums to the homes of CEOs. One of the most interesting and catalyzing portions of the book is Bob Hare’s psychopath test. Ronson attends a training and learns how to score people on the twenty-point test. It’s impossible not to run through the test for yourself and your friends. Item 3: Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom- well, I do get antsy when I’m still for too long. . . Item 15: Irresponsibility- I have been putting off doing my laundry. . . This ends up being part of Ronson’s point: as we as a culture attempt to delineate crazy, we all have to fight to convince ourselves that we are “normal” (amusingly, he cites reality TV as one way that we maintain our feeling of personal normalcy; I must really need convincing).

This argument builds as Ronson meets Tony, a man who claims to have pretended that he was a psychopath so well that he was locked up in an insane asylum for a decade. Tony’s story is so interesting because it illustrates some central problems with diagnosing someone as a psychopath: who gets to do the diagnosing, and how is it possible that acting normal can actually prove that you are abnormal? The book contained more “normal” craziness than full-on psychopath. I was expecting more characters like The Joker from Batman, but the true threat comes from Hare’s assertion that psychopaths are all around us (1% of the population!) and difficult to identify.

By the last quarter of the book, Ronson got, well, maybe too rational, and the shocking details trailed off a bit, making it less exhilarating than the exclaim-worthy beginning. However, as a whole, this book successfully navigates the thin line between crazy and genius, and by the end of it I felt more like a crazy genius myself, making the read well worth it.