Subversive Reader Reviews: Clara in Washington (AWW2013)

January 5, 2013Books and ReadingAWW 2013, Book Reviews, books, Subversive Reader Book Reviewssubversivereader Leave a comment

Book reviews and AWW posts can be found here.

AWW2013 – Book 4

Clara in Washington

Penny Tangey
Young Adult Contemporary Fiction

Kindle e-book, purchased through Amazon

A few years ago I read Loving Richard Feynman, which was innovative, interesting and a really good read. So I came to Clara in Washington, written by the same author, quite excited – an author I’d enjoyed in the past, a fish out of water storyline, a Washington setting – I should really enjoy this book. Unfortunately, I was soon to be disappointed.

Clara has finished her school exams, but doesn’t really want to go on her normal summer holiday excursion to the beach – mostly because she’s embarrassed about the ‘relationship’ she had with a boy who will also be there. Instead, she braves the big bad world and heads to Washington DC, where her mother is working, to explore the sites of Washington, volunteer her time and hopefully find herself. Who knew there’d be anarchists involved?

There was a bit of a slow start to the book, it didn’t really get going until chapter three, which is a pretty big no-no in a Young Adult book. By the time it got going, I pretty much wanted to reach through my iPad screen and shake Clara and about half the other characters in the book. Clara’s defining quality is that she apologises ‘too much’, asks too many questions and is very unsure of herself. This plays over and over again (just to make sure we get the idea). The problem is, there are some points in the story where people just expect her to know what’s happening and then get frustrated when she asks questions. To top it all off, there’s her romance with (possibly the biggest arsehole in young adult literature) a young ‘anarchist’, coffee maker, which somehow never seems believable. I didn’t believe that Clara wouldn’t be more cautious about her relationship with him when she’s over cautious about everything else in her life.

This book could have been great. Clara sees most of Washington, but all we get to see of it is a dusty Hope Diamond, a brief glimpse of a couple of other museums and a quick peek at the Lincoln Memorial. The anarchist plotline felt over laboured, more tell than show, with lots of researched information jammed in. The likable characters in the story got too little time – a story with them featuring more would have been much more interesting. But all in all, this book just never came together in a way that was enjoyable.

Subversive Reader Reviews: Team Human (AWW2013)

January 5, 2013Books and ReadingAWW 2013, Book Reviews, books, Subversive Reader Book Reviewssubversivereader Leave a comment

Book reviews and AWW posts can be found here.

AWW2013 – Book 3

Team Human

Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan
Speculative Young Adult Fiction

Kindle e-book, purchased through Amazon

Vampire Fiction is a ‘thing’ these days. After reading Team Human, I’m pretty happy about that – especially if it inspired this book!

Mel, our hero, is pretty anti-vampire. Which can make like a little difficult when you live in a vampire town, New Whitby, and a vampire turns up at your school. Then falls in love with your best friend.

But there’s something a little bit strange about him, not to mention the way the Principal is reacting to him, and Mel is determined to get to the bottom of it.

When I write the summary like that, Team Human looks a little sparse, like it doesn’t really have much in it at all. But there’s a lot more besides a vampire detective story going on here. There’s love stories left, right and centre. There’s the complicated world of high school friendships. There’s the confusing notion of determining who you are when you’ve lived less than two decades of your life (and when you’re surrounded by people who contemplate their 20th decade . . .). Then there’s the whole new vampire world.

It’s acknowledged that vampires can be dangerous – they’ve got power beyond what humans have, that’s why they have the vampire section of the police force. Being a vampire, in Team Human, has become a regulated thing, allowing them to live alongside the humans in their town. Even becoming a vampire is extremely regulated – but since there can be catastrophic consequences, this is a Good Thing. The world that has been created here is extrememly rich, and it’s going to leave a lot of readers like me – wanting more stories set in this universe.

Mel is a sympathetic and believable main character. She isn’t always right, but it’s easy to understand her motives. She’s surrounded by a great cast of characters – I’m a big fan of both Anna and Kit. What’s even cooler about the group of characters is that it’s incredibly diverse, but in a perfectly normal way.

This is the book that I would have (and will, if I see them) recommended to some of my more mature students. I can see it gaining a bit of cult popularity among teenagers who are a little over the Twilight ‘thing’, but who enjoy speculative fiction. I’m also going to be recommending it to the adults I know – especially my sisters who I think will both enjoy it 🙂

Subversive Reader Reviews: Love and Romanpunk (AWW2013)

January 5, 2013Books and ReadingAWW 2013, Book Reviews, books, Subversive Reader Book Reviewssubversivereader View all 4 comments

Book reviews and AWW posts can be found here.

AWW2013 – Book 2

Love and Romanpunk

Tansy Rayner Roberts
Speculative Fiction

Kindle e-book, purchased through Amazon

(Disclaimer – I know the author through the internet)

Back in the olden days before I became a teacher, I completed an arts degree with a double major in Ancient History. My real love was Ancient Athens (I even learned Ancient Greek), but I did have a certain fondness for the early empire.

Which, luckily for me, is what Love and Romanpunk is based around.

The book is part of the Twelve Planet series and consists of four short, related stories. In the first one, Julia Agrippina’s Secret Family Bestiary, we are introduced to the background to our story, told by my favourite of all Roman women (I studied Nero a little, so spent way too long designing collapsible boats with other wayward students. Did I mention we drank a lot of wine in the Ancient History department?) It turns out that the twists and turns of the early Roman empire where not caused by revolution and jealousy and a certain fondness for horses alone. Instead, there were numerous creatures and beings, some of them members of the ruling family. While we learn about the Roman world, which is kind of as we knew it, we are being fed information which sets up the next three stories – including the introduction of Lamia – Roman vampires.

In Lamia Victoriana, we follow these creatures to Victorian times. We then slip forward in history to a Roman City built in the Australian outback in The Patrician, before heading into the future in Last of the Romanpunks. Each story builds on the last, and I must admit that I really feel like I should read the whole lot again so that I can really understand it even better.

I don’t read a huge amount of short stories, but I understand that it’s a delicate balancing act to create fleshed out characters, without getting bogged down in lengthy character exposition. I think Love and Romanpunk does an excellent job of doing this, building on characters that we ‘know’ and creating characters that are very easy to care about. I would easily want to read more about the different ‘worlds’ we are introduced to.

I really loved this book and I would recommend this book to history lovers, of course, but also to people who aren’t usually interested in speculative fiction, but would like to dip their toes in a bit. The format is a great way to be introduced to Australian speculative fiction, and I look forward to reading more of them. I believe Love and Romanpunk had sold out in the print form, but is easily found through Kindle or the Twelfth Planet Press website.

Subversive Reader Reviews: What Alice Forgot (AWW2013)

January 5, 2013Books and ReadingAWW 2013, Book Reviews, books, Subversive Reader Book Reviewssubversivereader View all 2 comments

Book reviews and AWW posts can be found here.

AWW2013 – Book 1

What Alice Forgot

Liane Moriarty
Contemporary Fiction

Paperback Book – purchased from local bookstore

Imagine if you suddenly lost ten years of your life. In my case, I’d lose living with my boyfriend, my engagement and wedding, my career as a teacher and the pregnancy and birth of my child. It’s a horrifying scenario which is the catalyst for Liane Moriarty’s book, What Alice Forgot.

Alice is participating in a particularly strenuous gym class when she hits her head and is knocked out. When she wakes up, she thinks it is ten years earlier, and she is pregnant. Before long she learns that the world she thinks she is in is long gone – she actually has three children, and is divorcing her husband. She’s lost the memories of her children being born, the memories of them being babies, her sister’s fertility problems and whatever happened to Gina, whoever that is. All she has is occasional flashes of memory, as she rebuilds her current life from nothing.

This book is told from three different perspectives. First we have Alice, told from the perspective of a third-person narrator. Then there’s Alice’s sister, Elizabeth, told through journal entries to her therapist. Finally we have Frannie, Alice and Elizabeth’s ‘adopted’ great grandmother, who writes a blog. Both Elizabeth and Frannie’s accounts, told from a first person perspective are unreliable and incomplete – we need Alice’s story to put them all together.

To be honest, Frannie’s blog entries were probably the least interesting, and least needed, part of the book. Elizabeth and Alice are complex and interesting enough to carry the story without needing Frannie’s blog. I really liked moving back and forward between the sister’s and found it an interesting look at how sisters, no matter how close they might have once been, can grow apart.

There were two other things which I particularly enjoyed about What Alice Forgot. First was the portrayal of the children. None of them were perfect, nor were they ‘awful’. They were children, each with their own personalities, but with the lack of censorship and maturity which (usually) comes as we grow and become more aware of the world around us. Secondly, I adored the portrayal of Elizabeth’s infertility and found it painfully accurate, to the extent that it made me cry.

There’s many interesting philosophical and ethical questions which can be raised from this book, such as how we are shaped by circumstances, events and the people around us, how our memories change who we are, how much we should tell people, is omission really lying? It would probably be a great book club book.

To be honest, this is the kind of book that I would normally buy (especially from the ‘specials’ table) and then put it aside and never read it. I was glad I did read it, though, and I already can see that this challenge will be assisting me to move away from that behaviour – even if it’s just for a year. It was an enjoyable and thoughtful read and the basis for a couple of really interesting conversations between my husband and myself.

Australian Women Writer’s Challenge 2013: Organisation and Progress – Part One

January 4, 2013Books and ReadingAWW 2013, blogging, Book Reviews, Readingsubversivereader Leave a comment

Close to the end of last year, I signed up for the 2013 Australian Women Writer’s Challenge. Now that 2013 is actually here, I need to start working out how I’m going to organise the challenge on the blog.

What am I Doing in the Challenge

I’m actually, kinda, doing two challenges – finding Australian Women Writers to read and review for Squirm, and Australian Women Writers to read and review myself.
My challenge level is the Franklin level, which is to read 10 books and review at least 6.
I’m trying to challenge myself to read in a range of genres. I’ve read three so far: one contemporary fiction and two speculative fiction, which I don’t usually read!

How am I Going to Post About the Challenge

You can keep track of my books at Goodreads – My books and Squirm’s Books
I’ll post reviews for my books in separate posts (for linking reasons) on Saturdays only.
Each week I’ll write an update post, also published on Saturday
Squirm’s books will be part of Squirm’s book reviews which are a collection of reviews posted on Wednesdays
There’ll be a master page, up under the reading tab (look at the top of the page 🙂 )

Are you doing the AWW 2013 challenge? Have you got any Australian women writers to recommend to me? Have you read any awesome books this year?

Project 365 Books: Week One

January 4, 2013PicturesProject 365: Bookssubversivereader View all 2 comments

I’m undertaking a 365 project for the first time. My theme for the year is books! Eventually you’ll find all the posts under this tag. I’m intending on posting the photos on Fridays, though no doubt sometimes I won’t get them up until later on the weekend 🙂

Week One

The Daily Photos

Photo 1/365
Squirm and I start the new year with half a chapter of The Borrowers

Photo 2/365
I finished What Alice Forgot the night before and left it here to write about

Photo 3/365
Picture Books at Bribie Island Library

Photo 4/365
My Library Books – all for the AWW 2013 Challenge

Breastfeeding: Old Wives Tales and Double Standards

January 4, 2013Family, Opinion and Other Random ThingsCrunchy, Motherhood, squirmsubversivereader View all 46 comments

I talked about breastfeeding a little while ago and I thought that would be all I’d have to say on the subject. Apparently, though, there’s more that needs to be said!

A few weeks ago I was at my GPs for Squirm’s check up. All was going great until the doctor asked me if I was still breastfeeding. “Yep!” I said, pretty happy that things were going so well at more than four months (especially with teeth coming in). Instead I got a serious look from the doctor, a lecture on the Vitamin C deficiencies of breast milk (?!) and a recommendation that I should give Squirm juice, and told that I really should have started that from 3 months.

This advice, based on an old wives tale, is just another piece of false advice given to me and other breastfeeding mothers. We are bombarded with them constantly from ‘Breastfeeding will cause saggy boobs’ (Pregnancy causes saggy boobs) to ‘When your breasts are soft you don’t have any milk any more’ (Breasts naturally soften after a little while. Thank goodness.) Sadly, a lot of the old wives tales come from the medical profession. I’ve avoided child health nurses since I was told that I had to introduce Squirm to a bottle and that hand expressing would cause mastitis. Then there’s my doctor friend with his concern that I wasn’t giving my (obviously healthy) baby the right nutrients.

A lot of these tales, unsurprisingly, are reinforced by people interested in promoting companies and products rather than breastfeeding. Henri Nestle, whose company developed an early formula in the late 1800s, was an entrepreneur, not a doctor, so obviously it was in his best interests to get as many mothers using formula as possible – whether they needed to or not. To get people to switch to bottle feeding, they had to convince mothers that breast milk was not as good for their babies as formula was. It’s pretty easy to tell mothers that their milk is too thin (compare what breast milk and formula looks like) or that there can’t be enough vitamins – after all we can’t tell what is in breast milk – there’s no handy ingredients label!

To add to the misinformation, there’s the double standard.

Imagine you were (for whatever reason) using formula. The feeding was going great for you and your baby was putting on good weight, but you were having some sleep issues. You turn to an online forum for help when suddenly every fourth response or so told you that you must give up formula feeding immediately and relactate or find breastmilk donors. People would be (justifiably) outraged. How dare they blame formula feeding for an unrelated problem.

But yesterday, a question about sleep was posted on a popular Brisbane parenting Facebook page. A good number of the respondents told the mother bluntly that she should just stop breastfeeding and change to formula. That breast milk was bad for babies, too thin for babies, didn’t have the right nutrients for babies. One person even declared that breast milk can kill babies. Yet, when I contacted the moderator of the page, I was told that she didn’t take a position. Allowing one kind of response (stop breastfeeding) and not another (stop formula feeding) is taking a side.

(This is where I suddenly get comments about how people were made to feel guilty about bottle feeding. Which I agree sucks. But the general population agrees that it sucks. Ask breastfeeding women how many times they get ill informed, judgmental comments too – only they’re not allowed to talk about it, because it might make people feel guilty . . . )

The double standard continues – doctors and child health nurses who suggest things which are untrue and detrimental to breastfeeding or insist that the mother must stop feeding early for no reason are normal. A breastfeeding advocate who suggests untrue things about formula feeding ends up on the front page of the Courier Mail. Breastfeeding a toddler is seen as perverse or disgusting, but we’re bombarded with ads for toddler formula (which was only introduced after formula companies were prevented from advertising infant formula – so their names, brands, and products would still be seen on television and in print). Organisations like the Australian Breastfeeding Association have strict guidelines around what they can and cannot say – even if you’re just an attendee at a regular meeting, while formula companies like Karicare can set up ‘parenting support websites’ like this one.

The statistics are pretty clear – most women in Australia want to breastfeed. But only 15% (and that’s the generous statistic) of women in Australia are able to breastfeed exclusively for six months (the recommended Word Health Organisation guidelines). The question is, how do we get past the myths and double standards to provide real support for all those women who want to breastfeed?

They’ve actually been working on it in Timor Leste – where they now has a 50% rate of babies exclusively breastfed for 6 months. They’ve done a lot of different things to achieve this, including better educating medical professionals about breastfeeding and using women to support other women in breastfeeding. We can easily do that in Australia. It would take very little for Child Health Nurses and GPs to be better educated on breastfeeding (they could read the fact or fiction page on the ABA website and be a lot better off to start with).

Additionally, every woman can help other women who want to breastfeed. It can be as simple as smiling at a woman who is breast feeding in public rather than telling them to cover the baby’s head or to turn and face the wall (a friend was told she should do that because breastfeeding was ‘disgusting’ – she already had a cover over the bub!) Instead of repeating the old wives tales to someone who is having trouble, you can recommend the ABA helpline (which is open to everyone, whether they are members or not) or a lactation counselor. If you’re not certain about whether you’re repeating an old wives tale (lots of grandmothers still suggest giving babies a bottle of water in summer – because that’s what they were told to do) but you really want to help, then take a little time to learn a little more about breastfeeding through visiting sites like ABA or Kellymom – it’s pretty amazing what our bodies can do and it’s cool to learn about!

This isn’t breastfeeding versus formula feeding. This is making sure accurate information is shared. This is making sure that choices are respected. This is making sure that those women who want to breastfeed are supported. This is making sure that the mothers are making the informed decisions, not the formula companies or the media.

“So, you’re telling me that in three months this milk is going to give me scurvy? Interesting . . .”

More information on the background of formula companies and dodgy practices
And more dodgy formula company practices

What is Baby-Led Weaning and Why Are We Doing It?

January 3, 2013Familybaby-led weaning, cooking, Crunchy, squirmsubversivereader View all 5 comments

What is Baby-Led Weaning?

It’s become ‘common understanding’, in most western countries anyway, that there’s a certain path you must follow to introduce solids to your baby. Somewhere between 4 and 6 months (though for medical reasons, some people wait longer) you introduce cereals to your baby, followed by a set period of purees, mashed foods, then finger foods. I thought this was the only way to do it, at least until I was pregnant and came across baby-led weaning.

Baby-led weaning, or baby-led solids, is simply an alternate way of introducing solids to your baby’s diet. It involves the baby becoming part of family meal times – sitting with the family and sharing the family food. Some parents do it by offering food from their own plate, while others put some of the food the family is eating on a plate or a tray for the baby to chose from.

Because it is baby led, the baby chooses what they want to ‘eat’ or not eat. In the early days, this is more exploration or play – they need to work out how food, and their mouths, work, so they still get almost all their food from milk. But as they are being introduced to a wide range of food – and they see their family eating it – they are likely to eat a wide range of food from a young age.

Why are we doing Baby-Led weaning?

When I came across Baby-led weaning, I became kind of excited. This seemed perfect for us:

No preparing purees, mashes or special food different to us. This so appeals to the lazy side of me 🙂
Creating the idea of a family table right from the start. Squirm eats with us, at the same time as us, from the beginning
Being able to introduce a wide range of food early. I can be a bit picky in my eating, so I’d like Squirm to be introduced to lots of foods
Letting Squirm control his food from the start.

What do we need for Baby-led Weaning

A way for the baby to sit up at the table – either in a high chair or on the parents lap
A cleanable surface. Baby-led weaning can be messy to start with, though that improves with a bit of time.
Some modifications to food. Egg must be well cooked and it’s a good idea to avoid honey until the baby reaches 12 months. Small nuts and other things which may cause choking need to be avoided or modified. To start with, it’s easier to cut food into easy to hold shapes. And it’s best to avoid a lot of salt and sugar.
And understanding of the difference between gagging and choking.

We read the Gill Rapley books – Baby Led Weaning and the Baby Led Weaning Cookbook. The first one gives a good in depth look at Baby-led weaning, while the second one gives an overview and then some good recipes to try out (if you want to buy one, I’d suggest the cook book. We’ve tried some of the recipes and they’re great). You don’t need to read either book, but they do give some great background and information.

So we’ve got a few more weeks to go until we start and we’re just beginning to get ourselves organised. Squirm sits with us for most meals and enjoys the social aspect of dinner already. We still need to buy a mat to go under his chair, but we’ve been trying out a range of different recipes which we’ve really enjoyed. And we’ll be sure to share the adventure with you.

What was the hardest part about introducing solids with your child? What were the funniest bits?

Squirm’s Book Reviews: The Clothing Edition

January 2, 2013Books and ReadingSquirm's book reviewssubversivereader View all 3 comments

Each week I review books we’ve read with Squirm. Find other reviews here

Queen Victoria’s Underpants by Jackie French and Bruce Whatley

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Queen Victoria's Underpants

This is the first book in the Queen Victoria ‘series’ (there is only two books, as far as I know). This is one of my favourite kinds of picture books – ones that make historical facts interesting. If you’ve had the good fortune to read Jackie French’s Fair Dinkum History books (excellent books on Australian history for middle grade readers) or her other middle grade historical fiction books, you’d know that she’s excellent at writing history for kids. And (to step up on my soapbox for a moment) history should be about stories and people, not just about dates and places. It’s how we get readers and learners interested, and it’s how we keep them interested. (Step off soapbox)

This book is told from the perspective of a girl whose mother made underpants (or drawers) for Queen Victoria. She frames this by talking about the historical connections of her friends (like Bridget, whose father drove the first steam train in England) before introducing both Queen Victoria and the status of underpants at that time (most people didn’t wear them!) The girl and her family discuss why the Queen might want underpants (rollerskating) and what kind of underpants the Queen might like (tartan or well padded? And should they have a secret pocket?). The whole family gets involved in making 52 pairs of underpants before meeting the Queen – who was wearing a secret smile and a pair of underpants under her dress.

Any book with the word underpants in it is going to amuse children, but this one amused me as well. There’s a lot of humour in both the words, and Bruce Whatley’s wonderful illustrations. The illustrations also add to the historical side of the book – we see toys and pastimes and fashions that were popular during the Victorian times. At the end of the book, there’s a brilliant historical note – about both Queen Victoria and underpants!

It would be fun to go searching for pictures of different underwear at different times after reading this book – it certainly would make an interesting poster or project. Fashion in general, through the ages, would also be fascinating to research. You could also look at Queen Victoria and the Victorian times, or the royal family of England in general. For younger children, you could use paper to make ‘lift the flaps’ of different layers of clothing, or play with a felt board and cut outs of layers of clothing.

Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed by Mo Willems

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Naken Mole Rat Gets Dressed

At the beginning of this book we learn three things about naked mole rats: they’re a little bit rat, they’re a little bit mole, they are all naked. Except for Wilbur, that is, who likes to wear clothes. This really annoys the other naked mole rats, because it’s totally against the ethos of naked mole rats. They should be naked. It’s right there in the name! The other naked mole rats get so upset, that they take it to Grand-pah – the greatest naked mole rat that ever lived.

This is a book about difference and tolerance – especially when people are doing things that might seem a little strange. The illustrations are fairly simple (though more complex than the Pigeon books) but there’s no dumbing down of the language for younger readers. It’s not the shortest of books, so it may not hold the attention of some readers, but it’s totally worth the effort if you do make it through the book.

This would be another book where felt board activities would be a lot of fun. You could cut out your own naked mole rat and a bunch of things to dress them in. Kids might also like to know more about the naked mole rat (they’re really weird looking!) and you might be able to find some good videos of them on YouTube. You could also use this book for some basic maths data/chance activities – if Wilbur had 2 ties, 2 shirts and 2 pairs of socks, what different combinations could he put together?

Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Caps for Sale

This is a classic book about a peddler of caps and a bunch of mischievous monkeys. The peddler walks through town trying to sell his caps, with little success. When he falls asleep under a tree, he awakes to find all his caps have been taken by the monkeys up in the tree. He tries everything to convince the monkeys to give the caps back, but the monkeys just imitate everything he does!

This is a classic for a reason. There’s a lot of simple repeating parts, and the little twist at the end is really delightful. There’s a lot you can do with acting this one out, the actions of the peddler and the monkeys are made for movement! Again, a great felt board book (I’m so going to have to make a felt board soon!), and great for counting all the caps.

Subversive Reader Reviews: End of Year Reading – Part Three

January 1, 2013Books and ReadingBook Reviews, books, Subversive Reader Book Reviewssubversivereader View all 2 comments

I was really hoping to get this written yesterday, but events conspired against me! These are the last of the books I read at the end of 2012. For other reviews, check out Part One and Part Two.

All links lead to Goodreads

Market Blues by Kirsty Murray

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Market Blues

Children’s Fiction

Time Travel seems to be a consistent theme in children’s fiction, a lot of the time serving as a device to turn the story into historical fiction while still allowing for lots of exposition (since the character learns about the time period at the same time as the reader). This was fairly similar to other time travel books I’ve read (and I seem to have read quite a few!). Sam Sullivan is a nice enough kid, but he seems to find trouble wherever he goes. His parents have broken up, his father isn’t always reliable (there’s a strong history of gambling) and there’s never enough money. To make a bit extra, Sam works at the markets, but soon discovers that people play music for money. He tries it himself, playing his trumpet at a nearby monument, but suddenly finds himself being pulled back to Melbourne in 1900.

There’s a lot going on in this book and both 1900 and present day Melbourne are written quite vividly. It was a bit of a jolt when someone pointed out that the states hadn’t federated yet (that happened in 1901) and I appreciated that little piece of history snuck in, especially when there’s moments when you feel like 1900 wasn’t really that long ago. The story does drag a bit at the end of the book – it almost feels like the story has been told and completed, but there’s still more to go. That made it less appealing to me.

This is a good read for people who like historical fiction, especially Australian historical fiction. With Sam constantly finding himself in trouble, despite good intentions, it’s the kind of story which would appeal to some kids who don’t always read. I dare say it would make a very good read aloud book too.

Louis Beside Himself by Anna Fienberg

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Louis Beside Himself

Children’s Fiction

I’m not a big sports fan, but I’ve read a number of books which made me care about the sports involved. Mike Lupica is one example, but Bryce Courtenay did it with boxing in The Power of One and Tandia and Juggling with Mandarins by V. M Jones did it with both soccer and rock climbing. Unfortunately, Louis Beside Himself didn’t have the same effect.

Louis is a bright boy who is obsessed with words, while his father is obsessed with teaching him the latest wrestling moves. Unfortunately neither wrestling or words become very interesting as we are taken through a convoluted tale of runaways, breaking into houses and friendships. It’s hard to summarise the story easily, because it felt less like a story, and more like a laundry list of elements that the writer has to include – popular ‘sport’: check; long words: check; diverse group of friends: check; mystery to solve: check; temperamental older sister: check; distracted father: check. None of the elements quite gel the way you hope they will and it leave you with a bit of a confusion of a book.

My other quibble was the love of words thing. When it’s done well (Lemony Snicket) big words are awesome in books. But constantly using big words without the humour of Snicket leaves you feeling a little frustrated and annoyed.

If you have a wrestling fan, they might enjoy this book, but if you know nothing about wrestling, this book won’t convert you. Pick up a Mike Lupica or Lemony Snicket book instead.

The Boy Under the Table by Nicole Trope

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: The Boy Under the Table

Adult Contemporary Fiction

This was a bit of a surprise of a book which I found myself half desperate to finish and half desperate to put down because I felt so bad for the characters.

The book is about a couple from the bush, struggling after their son was taken from the Easter Show. At the same time, Tina, who is doing almost anything to survive in Kings Cross, finds a boy tied up under a kitchen table. What follows is a story told from multiple perspectives as Tina rescues the boy and works to reunite him with his parents.

It’s a strangely compelling book. It would probably get a bit tedious if we were with one person all the time, but this way we get to meet different personalities and different stories, which all work beautifully into the main narrative. There’s a sense of urgency hanging over the whole book, and there’s a lot of times where the reader knows what is happening and the characters don’t and you wish you could just reach into the book and tell them. The ending is a little too neat for me, but then it’s told from the boy’s perspective, so it’s not an adult narrator which could make it a little neater. I did find myself wanting more at the end of the book, but all in all it was a really good book, even though it wasn’t the type I usually read.

Mrs Queen Takes the Train by William Kuhn

Adventures of a Subversive Reader: Mrs Queen Takes the Train

Adult Contemporary Fiction

I saw this book in various places in the lead up to Christmas, so it felt like a good book to end the year on. The Queen is feeling a bit down, and is looking for things to cheer her up. A series of events put her on the path to heading out of the palace unannounced and taking a train on her own. Various members of the palace staff realise that this could be a quick road to disaster and head out to try to intercept her.

This is a quick, funny read, filled with historical and pop culture references. I didn’t feel that I fully accepted the portrayal of the Queen – it was more doddering old lady who doesn’t understand the internet than the Queen we see wearing 3D glasses to see her Christmas message. This didn’t distract from the enjoyment in the story though – giving us an almost alternative universe Queen, rather than the one we’re used to.

There’s a lot of enjoyment, also, in the various characters who head off to intercept the Queen. There’s an odd couple feel to most of them which manages to be funny and interesting at the same time. This isn’t great literature and it’s greatly improbable in parts, but as a What If . . . story, it’s an awful lot of fun.