Heart of Warrior, by Johanna Lindsey, OR On Falling in Love with Invading Aliens

The first romance novel I pulled out a couple weeks ago was called “Heart of a Warrior” by Johanna Lindsey. Upon opening it, I was treated to a scandalous picture of…well…never mind, I'm going to spare myself the trouble of trying to describe that and simply stick to the tamer cover:



That disco ball rose thing alone can show you why I was not expecting a Homer-esque epic. I keep trying to come up with a decent way to summarize it, but I’m just going to have to use the blurb from the back cover.

“Stunning, statuesque Brittany Callaghan isn’t used to seeing Nordic gods in her tiny California town. But when the spectacular blond Viking—whose name is Dalden—turns up at her doorstep, Brittany knows her dream man is very real. Dalden claims to be a barbarian warrior—and since Brittany’s passion has been running red-hot since she first saw him, the sexy giant can fancy himself anything he pleases!
The truth is a very rude awakening—for Dalden is exactly what he claims to be: a warrior to the depths of his soul from a place where the women always obey. Intelligent, independent Brittany isn’t about to be subservient to any male—not even one who’s everything she’s ever wanted in al over. But the proud, powerful barbarian is accustomed to fighting for what he wants—and winning. And what he wants most of all…is Brittany.”

Wow, mes amis, wow. This is not only over the top, it’s just plain lying. First of all, nowhere in the book do they mention Vikings. Second, they didn’t very accurately describe Brittany—she’s six feet tall, and her biggest problem in the start of the book is that she can’t find a guy tall enough to date her. Every guy she’s found is too intimidated by her height, so she is alooooooooone and unloved and planning on building her own house, which every romance writer knows is a sign of a spinster-ish future.

Aside: I have a couple questions based on this blurb. First, how does one pronounce Brittany when it’s a girl’s name? Is it like Britney or like Brittany, the region of France that will soon be my home? Second, am I the only one who thinks that calling this guy (he’s 7’ or something) a giant is actually kind of creepy? I keep picturing Hagrid, and that is NOT a sexy image.

Okay, continuing with the lying. Numero trois, Dalden not only is not a Nordic god, he’s a freaking alien who’s come to earth to save it from this evil guy named Jorran or something who has these brainwashing sticks and plans on taking over the world.

It’s not exactly understood how this is going to work, since you have to be within a foot or so of someone to brainwash them, and the sticks don’t work on women, but whatever. Nordic gods have no need for common sense. And he manages to pull this off with the help of Brittany, because apparently Jorran was going to start his quest for world domination with a tiny town in California. Oh yeah, and Brittany and Dalden have sex after knowing each other for about 12 hours, but quite frankly that’s the most realistic thing in this book. Also, until this point Brittany just thinks Dalden is a weird guy from some remote place on earth who has all sorts of crazy technology. It’s only when she’s magically transported onto his spaceship that his computer, who is named Martha, starts to explain to Brittany that she’s being taken to Dalden’s home planet. Brittany is incredulous, as is the reader that such trash is published. Brittany is also informed by Martha that Dalden has taken her as his lifemate, which is apparently like marriage, but sans any love, because warriors from his planet don’t love.

Now here’s where things get really crazy. It’s a three month trip to Dalden’s home planet, and Brittany never freaking says goodbye to ANYONE, but she goes along for the ride because she doesn’t want to lose Dalden. I know she was single, but she has a job, four brothers, and, oh yeah, a roommate. This roommate saw Dalden once, and then all of a sudden Brittany is gone? If I were the roommate, I would assume a crazy serial murderer-rapist (who for some reason hadn’t been caught yet despite looking like a Nordic god) had killed my roomie. And not ONCE does Brittany think about the fact that she’s leaving her roommate with a lease and no way of covering the rent. What a ditz. Brittany mentions that she wants to come back to see her brothers, but there is no concern for the roommate with rent to pay. I was pissed off at Brittany on behalf of the roommate. Of all the things in the book, this was what I found hardest to believe. What sort of lovestruck girl ignores her friends to the extent that she forgets about such earthly matters as her lease? HONESTLY. Maybe aliens don’t pay rent.

Anyway, the rest of the book is boring. Brittany goes to Dalden’s planet, meets his family, has issues adjusting because Dalden expects unquestioning obedience since that’s what the other women are like, disobeys him and almost gets killed, gets punished, and then decides she can handle unquestioning obedience once he proves the warrior stereotype wrong and says he loves her. The End!

A Study in Genre: The Romance Novel

A precursor to a few upcoming reviews: they are NOT Young Adult, nor are they books I would normally be caught dead reading. However, I was recently “up north” at a cabin, and while unable to fall asleep, I decided to grab one of the books lying around. My options were at least a dozen mysteries or some trashy romances.

I have a long history with the trashy romance genre. My grandmother and mother have always loved them. When I was about 10 I still thought romances were boring, because everyone knew that boys were gross and kissing was nasty. If I was at a cottage or my grandparents house and I ran out of my own books to read, then I’d pick up my Grandpa’s copies of The Toledo Blade or Newsweek and read those instead. I’d also flip through every copy of Sports Illustrated around, searching for any mention of figure skating. Within a year or two, however, I’d decided that boys were vaguely intriguing after all, and maybe there was something to be said for these romances. Since most of my grandma’s stash is from the ‘60s (she and my mother both claim that romances were nice and wholesome back in their day, and now they’re just all about sex), the first few I stumbled upon were rather tame. One was even a Young Adult book (White House Autumn) that’s still one of my favorites (it’s possible I stole that for my collection…). However, my grandma often goes to Savers or Goodwill, clears out their entire romance novel collection, and then stores them in her basement, and it just so happens that not all of the ones she brought home were the nice, tame Harlequins of my mother’s youth.

Enlightening, I suppose, would be the best word for some of the racier books, and my poor innocent 12-year old self was shocked to pieces more than once. Talk about sex ed!

That said, once I stopped blushing (approximately four years later, I’d guess, as I was a naïve middle schooler), I decided that while these certainly weren’t real literature, they were awfully fun to read. Just on vacation, you know. To pass the time. If there wasn’t any Dostoevsky or Dickens hanging around.

The point of this history is that, when I found myself in need of a book, I selected the trashy romances over the mysteries. Besides, dealing with mysteries when in a forest in the middle of nowhere scares the hell out of me. I’ve seen enough episodes of Criminal Minds to know that all the creepy serial killers live out in the boonies. Plus there’s no light ANYWHERE out there (aside from the stars, and being a city girl, I don’t count those. I want some streetlights! And not the wimpy Evanston-variety streetlights, hardcore downtown streetlights!), and it would not be hard for someone to sneak up on me. At least in the city I’d see them coming.

So, yeah. It was all the crazy serial killers living in cabins up north that forced me to spend my time reading trashy romances. And no, we aren’t going to talk about why I never got around to reading my real literature that I’d brought with me.

Jellicoe Road, by Melina Marchetta, OR Of Confusion and Joy

Though it's been at least a year since I last read anything by Melina Marchetta, and I can no longer remember what her other books were about, I do remember that I liked them. That, combined with some seriously rave reviews about Jellicoe Road, got my hopes up. The first two times I tried to read the book however, I was let down. I doubt I made it much past the prologue the first time around, and my second try only got me to the end of the first chapter.

This time around, I finally slogged through the rough beginning chapters, and found myself halfway through and absolutely loving the book. The joy and spark in sentences missing from The Summer of Skinny Dipping was present throughout this book, and the pacing is incredible. The book builds towards the end, and does so perfectly. Similarly, we come to know Taylor as she comes to know the world around her. When she's separated and pushing things away, the reader similarly feels pushed away and doesn't particularly care for Taylor. As that changes however, and as Taylor starts to embrace the world around her, the reader similarly embraces Taylor. That in particular is very well constructed. I definitely can understand all the positive reviews this book received.

The downside to this book, however, is what kept me from getting into it the first few times around. There's a fine line between leaving the reader wondering and leaving the reader confused. A reader left wondering is eager to read more and discover what they need to know. A reader left confused, however, is more likely to put the book aside and give up on it. The opening, particularly the prologue and the first two or three chapters, leans more towards creating confusion than anticipation. Too many characters, too many different plots to follow, and seemingly no common threads. Those common threads need to be introduced earlier to avoid pushing readers away. I'm not saying we need to know everything at the beginning, but I certainly needed to know more than I did.

Aside from that problem, the form is fantastic, the prose is amazing, and the characters are delightful.

The Summer of Skinny Dipping, by Amanda Howells, OR Here We Go Again...

Here is the best thing about The Summer of Skinny Dipping: It was 33% off, and I had $5 in Borders Rewards money, so I ended up spending a whopping $1.12 on the book. I'm glad to report that my bank account will recover. This book also reminded me why it's always better to read books from the library, THEN purchase them. Because if I'd paid full price for this book, I would've been seriously miffed.

This book isn't horribly offensive. It just isn't all that good. It's the story of an overweight 16-year old girl (who just got dumped) whose spends the summer with her perfect, rich cousins at their lake house. She feels inadequate, is generally bummed out, meets a boy, falls in love with him, experiences a huge shift in worldview, and then some dramatic, life-changing stuff goes down. The end!

The biggest problem is the rather trite and conventional plot. Maybe if I had read this when I was 12 I would've bought it, but not anymore. Outsider girl with family issues goes somewhere else for the summer, meets a boy, is changed by boy, overcomes former issues, fin. This book completely falls into my hated category of 'books where girl falling for guy miraculously solves all girl's problems'. Even though this book doesn't tie things up as neatly as others, I get tired of that shtick. I love a good romance as much as the next single twentysomething, but the entirety of one's life does not become miraculously perfect upon the entrance of a single man in want of a wife into one's life, and it's simply absurd to suggest so.

The plot, however, could've been overcome. Almost all of Sarah Dessen's books follow that general trajectory, and while it still bothers me, it doesn't usually interfere with me enjoying the book. Unfortunately, Howells didn't show strong enough writing skills to excuse the plot. None of her descriptions (and there are a lot of descriptions) are particularly interesting, and too often they're cliched. The dialogue isn't anything special, and the pacing has some serious issues. Howells relies too much on foreshadowing to carry the reader through the novel, and she uses that to attempt to create anticipation rather than doing something fun with syntax or paragraphs or chapter lengths. The novel has a very steady, plodding pace, even when leading up to the high points of the story, and that gives the novel a rather flat affect (that is, if novels can have affects).

To top it all off, Howells is way too heavy-handed with her The Great Gatsby allusions. Don't mess with Gatsby if you want to stay on my good side.

Close, but no cigar

I recently had two books on my mental to-review list, but, alas, the world interfered, and it was not to be. I do have another book review waiting to be written. For now you get the reasons why the world interfered!


I recently raided my younger sister's YA Lit collection to see what I'd missed during the years when I was too busy to read anything but homework. One of the books I grabbed was Lauren Myracle's ttyl. I loved Myracle's Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks, which I read a few months ago. It was beautifully bittersweet, and I was excited to snag another of Myracle's books.

Then I opened it. And saw the entire first page written in IM-speak. And the next page was written the same way. I ran over to formerly mentioned sister and asked if the whole thing was written that way. When she said yes, I put it right back on her bookshelf where I'd found it.

Let me first state that I don't have anything against that form as a general rule. Heck, I would've loved it as an 11 year old. However, I am now twice that age and probably three times more jaded and four times less patient. I had to stop using 'u' for 'you' in seventh grade when my teachers started to get annoyed with it, and it was far easier just to use standard writing all the time than to switch back and forth. After that point I completely ceased having any patience for IM-speak or text-speak. I imagine middle schoolers would love having a book written in their dialect, but it was just going to make my brain explode. I'll just have to find another Myracle book written in slightly more standard English orthography.


The next book was acquired from the new city's public library. While the neighborhood branch has a pathetic little YA section that barely compares to the YA selection available at the old city's neighborhood branch (which was admittedly the central branch that just happened to be in my neighborhood), it did have a copy of Liz Gallagher's The Opposite of Invisible, which was on my to-read list. I read the first two pages, which seemed promising, and then was suddenly confused when the sentence on the end of the second page had nothing to do with the one on the next page. Turns out a page was missing in between the two.

Well, it was only pages three and four, so I went ahead and kept reading. It was early in the book and I was pretty sure I'd be able to figure things out. And I was. Until the end of page eight, after which there was another page missing. I was getting a little annoyed, but I was willing to keep up the effort, especially when Chapter two (the first complete chapter I got to read) seemed pretty good. Chapter three kept my attention as well, until the second to last page was also torn out.

At that point I gave up and decided to check out a different copy of the book. I can only handle so much guesswork.

So, excuses made, new review coming sometime this week. Promise!

Kalamazoo and waltzing and australopithecines, these are a few of my favorite things

According to my mother, my favorite word at age two was banister. Whenever going down stairs, I had to tell everyone that they had to hold on to the (big inhale to get ready for the word) banister.

A year later, having seen Anne of Green Gables several dozen times, my favorite word became chrysanthemum, mostly because I could spell it and no one else could. When my friends and I played school, I would give spelling tests that included words like cat, dog, no (I was also an expert speller of n-o n-a-p!), and, of course, chrysanthemum. It wasn't until I forced my sister to sit through the movie with me that someone else I knew finally figured out how to spell it. I didn't care that I hadn't the slightest idea what a chrysanthemum was, my ability to spell it clearly proved my superiority to other preschoolers.

There was a very long stretch of time in high school where my favorite words were Kalamazoo, willow, and waltz. My life got especially exciting every summer in high school when I'd go to Kalamazoo for an ice dance clinic, where I'd be working on dances like the Willow Waltz. And seriously, you need to cheer yourself up? Just say Kalamazoo once or twice, and you can't help but smile.

My favorite word since last fall has been australopithecine. I was required to learn all about australopithecines for my Anthropology class last fall, and about the only thing I remember is that australopithecine is really, really fun to say (it may or may not be the case that I remember nothing else because Karisa and I spent the entire semester doing sudoku, crossword puzzles, and making snide comments about how our professor knew nothing about linguistics).

Now comes the fun part: a linguistic analysis of favorite words! Feel free to skip the next two paragraphs if you, for some odd reason, don't want a short linguistics class. Several of my favorite words were my favorites simply because they were long and unusual. Okay, banister isn't super long or super unusual, but pretend you're three. There, now it seems a little more long and unusual. Unless you're a gardener, you don't go around talking about chrysanthemums, and you'd have to be a very single-minded anthropologist to find a way to use australopithecine in a regular conversation.

The second category my favorite words fall into is that of words with letters that are perceived as being interesting. Kalamazoo and waltz both have z in it, and even though that phoneme (or sound) is really frequent in the English language (you say it in houses, dishes, lads, and really most of the plurals out there where the singular form ends in a vowel or a voiced consonant), I for some reason see the letter as being really exciting. As for willow, the consonants are either liquids (l) or glides (w). Not a single stop in the word! Very exciting stuff.

So, what's your favorite word? Is it your favorite because of what it means, or because of how it sounds? Anyone adventurous enough to do their own linguistic analysis of their favorite words?

Alice in Charge, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor OR The Joy of Being an Anxiety-Ridden Senior in HS

I was getting a bit slacker-y with my YA lit reviews following my move and subsequent removal from the best public library ever (or rather, one that's better than my home town's public library). However, I made a return to my genre of choice for this week's release of Alice in Charge, the latest in Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's Alice series. I've been reading these since fifth or sixth grade, and the last time I was this excited about the newest Alice book was when The Grooming of Alice came out when I was roughly twelve. After that, my tastes shifted to prefer the slightly more contemplative and reflective (and definitely more angsty) books by Sarah Dessen and Megan McCafferty. However, last summer I spent a week or so getting caught up on all the Alice books I'd missed, and I was hooked all over again.

I love the Alice books for the same reasons I love the Betsy-Tacy Series by Maud Hart Lovelace. They follow one main character and a close group of friends from a young age growing up, and as the characters get older, the writing styles get more complex and so do the issues addressed. This gives us a lot of time to see how the characters develop and change, and it also makes you feel like Betsy or Alice are your best friends, and that you've grown up with them, too. Both Betsy and Alice make mistakes, big ones, and that makes it even easier to imagine that you know them. Both series even share a weakness--they tend to be a bit didactic because of their protagonists' screwups. Of course, Betsy doesn't do nearly as much talking about sex as Alice does, and Alice doesn't worry about curling her hair or winning the Essay Contest each year, but they do both spend about 60% of their lives focusing on school dances, so it's really all the same.

Now moving on to this Alice book in particular. Naylor does an amazing job describing the absolute insanity of the first semester of senior year of high school, and she barely even talks about the stress of classes and homework. In fact, Naylor does such an amazing job getting this across that I started to feel anxious and like I should be doing homework just from reading it. From what I remember, this was what initially made me tire of the Alice books. I was plenty stressed enough in real life, so I didn't need to be stressed when I was reading for fun. I was all about escapism. And it appears I still am, only now that I'm no longer in school I'm looking to escape back to that chaos. Reading about Alice's college visits, her panic over leaving home, trying to do all her extracurricular activities so she'd look good when applying to college...it was enough to make me want to take a nap.

I do appreciate the number of controversial issues Naylor tackles; in this book it was racism and white supremacy. I think it's really good to discus these things in YA Lit, and I love that the book's message always advocates tolerance and open dialogue. In fact, Naylor doesn't even insist that the reader agree with Alice. Alice is so open to listening to other people's opinions that she doesn't isolate a reader who disagrees with her. That said, I worry at times that Naylor lets these issues take over the plot. It doesn't always feel like these issues are flowing out of the plot, but rather that they're forced so that Naylor can address the controversy. That's not a terrible thing, but it'd be nicer if there was a little more flow and it seemed more natural.

Honestly, that's my only real complaint. I do wish Naylor would write a little faster (there are three more books coming, but there's only going to be one published each year). Yes, she wants to write other stuff besides Alice books, but I'm looking at this from a purely selfish point of view, and I want to read the end of the series NOW (patience is not my strength, which is why I drove 15 miles yesterday to get to the closest store that had this book in stock).

And finally, I love Patrick Long. And he has red hair. If he and Alice don't end up together forever, the heart of my eleven-year old self will die all over again. Maybe real life couples don't work out, but honestly, fictional couples HAVE to work out. That's the point of fiction. The author can decide these things.

Dear Phyllis Reynolds Naylor,
Please consider the heart and soul of my eleven-year old self when writing the final Alice books. I need Patrick and Alice to end up together.
Regards, Katrine.

In Memory: Jamie Salé and David Pelletier

Wait, who are they? They died?

Sigh. No, my friends, Salé and Pelletier are alive still. It is rather the heart of my eleven-year old self which has sadly perished. Farewell, heart. When my biographers look back to discover the point at which my heart vanished and any ideals of true love were crushed, they will surely decide that this moment was the turning point (yes, I will have biographers, and yes, I still had a heart until this point. Hush, all of you, I'm in mourning).

Yesterday I was made aware of the fact that Jamie Salé and David Pelletier (otherwise known as the Canadian pairs team from the Olympics who may or may not have been robbed of the gold medal, depending on the state of mind of one Marie-Reine Le Gougne, although either way they were given a set of gold medals) had filed for divorce.

This was not news to me or to anyone else who follows the skating world closely. Rumors have been swirling for quite some time (with good reason, as it appears the couple separated 18 months ago), but particularly since the Olympics. That said, I was perfectly content to deny, deny, deny. The 11-year old inside of me couldn't bear the thought of an end to such a perfect union.

I first discovered the two at 1999 Skate America when they debuted their now-famous Love Story program (that link is to a performance of the same program from two years later--it doesn't have the raw energy the '99 Skate American performance had, but it'll do). It was quite the performance, and Jamie and David went on to have an almost dream season until they just barely missed the podium at the World Championships when Jamie had a meltdown on her side-by-side jumps. It was a downer ending to the season, but they rebounded the next year with an even better program (in my opinion) to Tristan & Isolde (link is to the best performance they had of it all season).

It was during the 2000-2001 season that I really and truly became a fan of the two, and it didn't hurt for my romantic middle school self that there were various articles confirming that they were a romantic item. These rumors had started the year before, but apparently I was too young then to pay as much attention as I do now to skating rumors. Maybe I had more of a life then. Regardless. A skating team? Who had skated to, not one, but two romantic pieces of music for their long programs? Who were young and charismatic and good looking? And even better, David had a French accent! Sa-woooon. Clearly there was nothing not to love about this team, and if David wasn't going to fall in love with me, then I guess it was okay that he fell in love with Jamie. They won the World Championships in 2001, and I squealed gleefully in front of my computer screen, as there wasn't live coverage of it in the US, so I was following along online.

I could tell you about everything that followed--the coaching changes, the Orchid program that they totally should not have dumped, and some rumored trouble in paradise at the 2002 Canadian Championships, but I'm pretty sure none of you care about that, so we'll skip to that whole Salt Lake City Olympic-sized fiasco in 2002. Overnight, my favorite skating team was suddenly all over the newspapers, getting interviewed right and left, and suddenly people decided to give them another gold medal. When they announced that they would be retiring from competitive skating shortly after all this, I was seriously bummed, and thus ended my brief love affair with Jamie and David.

I still, however, followed their pro skating. I met them when they came into town, and I even got to see them skate live (which I had been trying but failing to do for several years). They eventually got married and had a son, and though by then a more realistic 17 years old, I thought this was all the proof I needed that love was true and fate had a hand in everything and we would all live happily ever after.

Sigh.

It would appear that none of this is true, for the two have parted ways. What with the rumors of cheating on Dave's part, I can no longer even dream of falling in love with a blue-eyed, figure skating, hockey playing, French accented man. And thus, with this news, my 11-year old self dies.

I leave you all with a fluff piece from happier days.

You don't feel like going to work, either? Let's strike!

For a blog that has a French title, it is utterly appalling that I've yet to cover any French news. I shall now rectify that situation (and hopefully get back to updating regularly now that I've mostly unpacked from my latest move).

The French love to strike. No, seriously, they LOVE it. If even a little bit dissatisfied with the taste of their bread, they will take to the streets for a protest (a 'manif'). I once was waiting for a train in Antibes, and they announced that the train would be about four minutes late. I am a girl who took public transportation (in the States) to get high school for four years, so I've dealt with a lot worse than a four minute delay. Clearly the French didn't have my jaded opinion of public transit, because upon hearing this announcement, I heard sighs and grumbles and saw people shaking their heads. One woman started ranting to me about how this was intolerable. I managed to keep from laughing. Barely.

Thankfully, the train wasn't any later than the anticipated four minutes, or I'm pretty sure there would've been a manif on the spot. I don't even want to know what would've happened if any French had been stuck on the Amtrak train I was on that was delayed four hours. They would've stormed the conductor's office without a second thought (we Americans, however, simply stayed seated, whined, and only began to panic when the snack bar ran out of food).

Despite their distaste for inefficient transit, the French have no qualms about going on strike every day (or every other day, should they get rather tired of doing it every day) and making sure to take to the streets for every strike. These strikes will almost always shut down roads, so driving isn't an option (try to plan moving days for when there isn't a strike--trust me, I know). And it seems that anyone in the transportation sector will join anyone else on strike. In fact, the biggest problem with strikes in France is that they're never limited to just one sector. When the teachers go on strike, the students protest with them, and then their parents decide that a strike and a manif sound like way more fun than going to work that day, so they jump on the strike bandwagon.

As a result, I wasn't even a little bit shocked to read that a good percentage of France is on strike over the retirement age. It appears that Sarkozy (henceforth referred to as Sarko, since an eight-year old French child I met when abroad called him that, and I decided to pick it up) is discussing raising the retirement age to 61 or 62.

I know, I know. They killed off the 35-hour work week in France, they have between five and eight weeks of vacation a year, and now this?! Appalling, really.

So naturally, everyone has gone on strike. Government workers, oil workers, hospital workers, teachers, and, of course, transport workers (because the transportation sector will never, never, miss out on a strike). Even Nestle is joining in, which is reason enough to panic in my book (there's no chocolate being made! CRISIS! Just give them all anything they ask for! Hell, make the retirement age 49!). Because, really, a retirement age of anything above 60 is just inhumane.

Oh, France. Just when I start to worry that the world has gone complacent, you remind me that I have nothing to worry about. It's such a relief to know that while all sorts of crazy things are going on around the world, I can always count on France to be blessedly consistent. Once I move to France in September, I will be greve-ing to my heart's delight!

An Ode to the Good Skating Student

In honor of my last week as a figure skating coach at my current rink, I am going to take this opportunity to wax rhapsodic about The Good Skating Student. I considered whining and ranting about The Bad Skating Student, but that seemed to lack a little taste.

The Good Skating Student, first and foremost, loves to skate. This may seem like a silly thing to say, but when you consider the number of students who have to be cajoled, teased, bribed, or just plain dragged on to the ice (either by me or their parents), anyone who is delighted to step on the ice is automatically awesome. They don’t necessarily have to be naturally talented at skating, but they have to want to do it.

The Good Skating Student, in fact, loves skating so much that he or she will come in and practice on their own in between lessons. Frequently this student will be dragging the parents to the ice rink instead of the other way around (I was this type of student. My poor parents will never get back the years of their life they spent carting me too and from the rink until I got my license), and the parents are usually all too happy to complain to me that they can’t get their kid off this ice. In fact, a sure sign of a Good Skating Student can be found by looking at the student’s parents. Do they have bags and dark shadows under their eyes? If they do, it is a good sign that you have a Good Skating Student on your hands and that you should celebrate, no matter how sleep deprived the parents get (I sincerely hope that if I have children, they do not turn out to be Good Skating Students, because I want to sleep more than I let my parents sleep).

As a result of this incessant practicing, the Good Skating Student will tend to pick things up very quickly. This isn’t a necessary part of being the Good Skating Student, but it is a nice little bonus. However, this doesn’t guarantee that the Good Skating Student will master everything immediately. One of my Good Skating Students this session is struggling mightily with her scratch spin. And pretty much every Good Skating Student around will run into a bit of trouble with the axel. But let us not ruin this happy discussion of Good Skating Students with a subject as fraught with devastation as the axel.

The Good Skating Student also is capable of listening. The student’s ability to stand still for 1.8 seconds while the coach offers up a quick tip is especially appreciated. Even better, the Good Skating Student can actually apply the quick tip the coach has just offered! This makes the coach feel like they are actually, well, coaching, rather than standing around giving Shakespearean soliloquies on skating, only without an audience (and the audience is essential to the Shakespearean soliloquy, because anyone else who wandered around debating whether or not to run away for one’s master, à la Lancelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice, would be considered insane).

Due to the Good Skating Student’s excellent listening skills, said student is very on top of skating terminology. The Good Skating Student will never look at me like I’m a madwoman when I ask to see a right outside three turn. And after I ask to see that, the Good Skating Student will not promptly show me a left inside three turn. Or a right inside three turn. Or a mohawk. Or a pivot. I reiterate once more, I do not care if the student fails to complete a successful right outside three turn, but if they are on the right foot and the correct edge going into it, then I am a happy happy coach! Any extra awesome Good Skating Student will in fact remember the name of almost everything, and thus not require that the aging coach (with arthritis in several joints and really numb feet because the coach is too poor to buy a properly fitted pair of skates) demonstrate the same thing every single week. This is most likely the best thing about the Good Skating Student.

Finally, Good Skating Students makes sure that their skate laces are tied well and are not about to snap prior to competing so that they do have to stop halfway through and weep to get the pity of the judges. This is in poor form. They also do not get involved with significant others who will hire people to whack the knees of their competition. That is especially poor form.

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, by Carolyn Mackler OR How It's Done

I’m sure there were some of you who were disappointed that my review of Things You Either Hate or Love wasn't exactly overwhelmingly positive. Never fear! Those of you who wanted to read a book about an overweight girl named after a state that seceded from the union with family issues who likes to make lists whose best friend has geographically departed for a period of time, I have found another option for you! (Oh, and it’s the girl who has family issues, not the state that seceded from the union. This is an excellent example of ambiguity in language. Please take notes.)

This time our protagonist is Virginia, not Georgia. Virginia comes from a more or less perfect family, wherein she sees herself as the only blemish. Her older sister, Anaïs, is smart and athletic, and currently is off with the Peace Corps in Africa. Her brother, Byron, goes to Columbia and is handsome, popular, a star debater, and a straight-A student. Their mom, who is from Arkansas, has a Ph.D. in adolescent psychology. She used to be overweight, but now just works out obsessively and eats lettuce at every meal. Their dad is a software executive who “is the first to admit that he likes women skinny” (18). Oh, and the whole family can speak French fluently and they love artsy things. Virginia is pretty sure that she was a mistake. And probably was switched at birth, too.

Virginia is overweight, loves to read magazines and spend time online, obsessively follows pop culture, hates working out, and is not good at French. And, to top it all off, her best friend has moved to Seattle for the year for her parents’ work. She has a weekly makeout session (for more on the oddness of that term, see Karisa Tells All) with a boy named Froggy, but she doesn’t even consider him a friend. After all, according to the Fat Girl Code of Conduct (written by her), no fat girl should ever push a relationship with a guy, and she should overcompensate for her looks by going further than skinny girls. Virginia’s so convinced of her own inferiority that she’s sure everyone else sees it the same way. She doesn’t give people the chance to get to know her because she assumes they don’t want to.

Things start to fall apart when her old brother gets in some serious trouble, gets suspended from Columbia, and moves back home. Virginia struggles with readjusting her view of Byron, and she withdraws even further from her life. She deals with her emotions by eating, whether it's refusing to eat anything or eating everything she can find. She’s on the verge of self-harm, burning her finger on purpose and breaking her toe when she kicks a wall. But when her parents refuse to let her spend Thanksgiving with her best friend in Seattle, Virginia finally starts to take things into her own hands. She uses her own money to buy the plane tickets out there, and she finally starts to feel again.

She gets an eyebrow ring, and the most popular girl in school (who pukes her guts out between every meal) admires it, which is a bit of a wakeup call to Virginia. Her doctor, instead of telling her to worry about her weight, says that she might want to start kickboxing to get out her anger. She buys a dress she likes, and when her mom says it’s the wrong color for her hair, she dyes her hair the same color as the dress—purple. She starts a webzine at her school where students can vent about their lives, and invites Froggy (who had stopped speaking to her because she kept ignoring him) to join. She even faces the person whose life should’ve been ruined by Byron, and learns a thing or two about moving on. She writes a letter to her older sister telling her everything that’s gone wrong, even though her mother wants her to keep it all quiet. And finally, she tells her dad that her weight is none of his business.

After all of this, things with Froggy finally work out, but he insists on having a public relationship.

This, my friends. This is how it is done. You do not give your main character mono so that she can lose weight. You have her face her feelings, you have her face her problems, you have her start to work through things. Then, once she’s done that, she gets a boy. That’s fine. But her problems don’t magically go away, as they did for Georgia in Things You Either Hate Or Love. Instead, Virginia has to work through them. She has to tell people what’s bothering her. She has to stand up for herself. She has to do things on her own, break a few rules, break out of the box that she put herself into.

Oh, and if she references Ani DiFranco lyrics a few times along the way, that works, too.

Skating Student Quote of the Day: On Specificity

Student: Are those things on the things for the thingy?

The sad part is that I knew almost exactly what the student wanted to know. He was asking about the purpose of hard skate guards.

The first 60 books of the year

I made a goal this year to read at least 120 books. That was about 20 more than I read last year (yes, I keep track of these things because yes, I am a nerd), and it came out to 10 books a month, which seemed reasonable.

Much to my surprise, I’m about two months ahead of schedule, since I passed the halfway point this week—guess that’s what happens when one doesn’t have homework taking up 24 hours a day and then some. Since I’ll be leaving the country in September, it’s a good thing that I’m moving along so well—I’m not sure what my access to books in English is going to be after that point, but I suspect I’ll have limited choices. I’m also leaving behind my favorite public library in just a month, which is going to kill the number of new books I get each week. I don’t have the funds to buy ten new books every week, especially if they could turn out to be awful. I also definitely don’t have the space to keep them somewhere. One of these days I’ll take a picture of my bookshelf as proof.

Anyway, I figured I’d do a quick recap of books 1-60, all of were given scores from 0-5, 5 being the highest and indicating that said book is generally awesome.

First book: The Red Leather Diary, by Lily Koppel, 3.

30^th book: 10 Things I Hate About Me, by Randa Abdel-Fattah, 3.

60^th book: Beautiful, by Amy Reed, 1.

Books receiving the full 5 points: The Last Time I Was Me, by Cathy Lamb and Paper Wings, by Marly Swick.

Books receiving 0 points: Winter Love, Winter Wishes, by Jane Claypool Minter (this book was an example of the perilous dangers of picking up any book that has figure skating on its cover) and My Name is Sus5an Smitth. The 5 is Silent, by Louise Plummer.

Average score for the first 60 books: 2.25.

On Poetry: In which I am a bad English major

As a child, I was quite the poet. Or so I thought, anyway. I enjoyed poetry for several well-thought out reasons:

1) Poems were shorter than books, meaning I could have my parents read several of them to me before bed.
2) Poems frequently rhymed, making them easier to memorize than books (I was a late reader and preferred to memorize rather than to read).
3) Anne of Green Gables liked poetry. I was raised on Anne of Green Gables.

I had a copy of A. A. Milne's When We Were Very Young, and I took it upon myself to memorize poems from it on a regular basis (I was particularly fond of Halfway Down). Starting in first grade, I saw talent shows as the perfect opportunity to display my ability to memorize poems. After all, Anne Shirley had given poetry recitations to thunderous applause at the White Sands Hotel in the 1985 Kevin Sullivan production of Anne of Green Gables, so why shouldn't I try to receive the same recognition?

Turns out elementary school children of the '90s just don't appreciate poetry the way everyone did in the movies.

Nevertheless, I maintained my loyalty to poetry and through the end of eighth grade, I was still memorizing poems for fun (as much fun as one can have, that is, mastering Emily Dickinson's Because I Could Not Stop for Death) and writing poems to get out all of my middle school angst. I think that every middle school student should be required to write several poems whenever they are feeling particularly emotional, if only so that they will have something to laugh at in ten years.

Unfortunately, poetry and I had a bit of a falling out when I started high school. Though I would still write some (terrible) poetry, I didn't like the whole concept of thwacking poems with a wet noodle in hopes of finding some meaning (I did like Introduction to Poetry as the poem itself seemed to discourage that type of analysis). I had a brief fling with The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and I was always happy to flirt with The Highwayman and Lady of Shalott (mostly because, you guessed it, they were featured in Anne of Green Gables), but alas, it was not enough to repair my fraying relationship with poetry. Our split was tragically finalized in the latter half of high school, when I lost all patience with love sonnets that found it necessary to rhyme "love" with "prove." I exaggerate not: From the Passionate Shepherd to His Love.

Had I been a practical soul and decided to to study nursing, like my mother, or political science and economics, like my father, I could've gone on to live a perfectly happy existence without any further attention paid to poetry. Instead I decided to study English. I was able to avoid poetry-centric classes for the most part. I was not, however, able to avoid my guilt at being a bad English major. I was supposed to like poetry! If an English major couldn't appreciate it, then really, who could? Was there any hope for me?

It appeared, last fall, that there was. My philosophy professor introduced me to a fabulous poem by Mary Oliver, The Summer Day. The last two lines (where the speaker asks "What is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?") give me goosebumps. A breakthrough! I had found a poem not mentioned in Anne of Green Gables that I was fond of! Finally I could embrace poetry and be the outstanding English major I'd always known was hiding inside me somewhere.

This was the plan until last week. Last week I decided to read an entire book of Mary Oliver's poetry in order to boost my ego about how I read poetry for fun. This failed miserably. There was one poem, ONE, in the whole book that I did not find entirely useless. Plus all the poems were about gardens and woodland animals and clouds, and I'm a city girl. The keys to my heart are concrete and public transportation and sirens and skyscrapers.

It appears that poetry and I are not yet reconciled. Is there hope for me yet? Any poems I should be reading that will lead to my breakthrough? Any poems you particularly love or hate?

Willow, by Julia Hoban, OR Why Pay for Therapy When You Could Have a Boyfriend?

I want to hate this book. I really, really do. The fact that I don't hate it makes me seriously concerned.

Let’s start with the least problematic aspect: I really disliked Hoban’s (or her editor’s) comma usage. There were several points where the lack of commas interfered with clarity. I also spotted a few other errors like missing spaces, so she should get a better copy editor (I’ll go out on a limb and volunteer myself since I could use a job).

Working my way up from there, the next troubling aspect was the poor use of Shakespeare, particularly The Tempest. It’s used as a clumsy plot device, and it’s not done so by someone who understands it. Though not the biggest Shakespeare fan around, I do think that he had some fantastic plots and themes and (this is the big one) competing discourses. When we’re presented with The Tempest and told only that it’s “romantic,” that really discredits all the other themes running through the play. Even worse, Hoban doesn’t even entertain the possibility that Early Modern Drama might not have the same conception of romance that we have today (for those who are wondering, it doesn’t. Not even close).

Next problem, which is an extremely serious one from my point of view: gender roles! Guy (yes, the male love interest's name is Guy) only likes Macbeth because he’s male? Yikes. So much for the universality of literature. And it killed me to have to suffer through lines like “I hoped that there would be a time when I would need to…protect you like this” (299). Ugh. Male as protector and savior, that’s nothing new. (Aside on this quote: from my perspective, there are two ways of reading it. Either Guy is referring to having a condom as his way of protecting Willow—which, though a bit paternalistic, is good, since I’m all for safe sex—or he’s referring to the act of sex itself as protecting Willow from her cutting. Not a big fan of the second reading, but it seems to be the more likely of the two.) Unfortunately, Hoban’s choice to deal with cutting as a subject matter makes this even more problematic than other books (like Sarah Dessen’s) that frequently have a male as a savior figure.

This leads me to my next concern. Ultimately, Willow isn’t able to save herself—Guy has to save her from herself. Guy is responsible for keeping Willow from cutting, and he is also responsible for trying to make her stop. And in the resolution, it’s having sex with Guy that gives Willow the ability to stop cutting and work towards resolving her conflicts with her brother. I have no problems with sex in YA lit, and many authors pull it off wonderfully. Unfortunately, this novel never seems to address Willow’s sexuality. Instead, sex is simply another alternative to cutting, another way to feel, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want people thinking about sex like that. And in the end, Willow doesn’t need psychological help to deal with her cutting. She just needs a boy.

Despite all of the above, I liked the book. I didn’t realize it was written in third person until I was almost done with it, which shows how close Hoban is able to bring the reader to Willow. All of Willow’s emotions are strong and real and subtle, but clear.

Quite frankly, I’m even more concerned about the book because I did love it. If the characters were flat and uninspiring, if the plot wasn’t engaging, if we didn’t care about Willow—then there would be no danger in all of Hoban’s messages. We could dismiss the book as a whole. But since we can’t, we have to be sure that we make explicit the problematic assumptions Hoban makes about gender, sexuality, and mental illness. Because maybe a young 14-year old who’s cutting won’t be able to see how it’s problematic—she’ll just see that she needs to go have sex with a boy and then everything will be better.

This reads like a lit paper. Making explicit problematic assumptions? You can take the English major out of lit classes, but you can't take the lit classes out of the English major.