None of the Above

None of the Above I.W. Gregorio 4/5	Published 2015 First Sentence "Dawn is my favorite time of day."
Publisher's Description: A groundbreaking story about a teenage girl who discovers she was born intersex... and what happens when her secret is revealed to the entire school. Incredibly compelling and sensitively told, None of the Above is a thought-provoking novel that explores what it means to be a boy, a girl, or something in between. What if everything you knew about yourself changed in an instant? When Kristin Lattimer is voted homecoming queen, it seems like another piece of her ideal life has fallen into place. She's a champion hurdler with a full scholarship to college and she's madly in love with her boyfriend. In fact, she's decided that she's ready to take things to the next level with him. But Kristin's first time isn't the perfect moment she's planned—something is very wrong. A visit to the doctor reveals the truth: Kristin is intersex, which means that though she outwardly looks like a girl, she has male chromosomes, not to mention boy "parts." Dealing with her body is difficult enough, but when her diagnosis is leaked to the whole school, Kristin's entire identity is thrown into question. As her world unravels, can she come to terms with her new self?
Dear Reader, This was a really hard book to rate. I wasn't really thrilled with the plot but the subject matter was a nice smack in the face (I almost wish I got smacked a bit more). Intersex, it sounds like some space term, something futuristic. We learn so early on that females have xx chromosomes and males have xy, what we aren't told (growing up) is that this isn't so cut and dry... variations do exist. I think that knowledge is something that the public should be taught early on, just the same way kids are now being taught that families/homes come in all different shapes, sizes and gender. Right off the bat this book had me, once the main character finds out and her mind automatically goes to the negative term of "hermaphrodite". I loved how the awareness was wrapped around her feelings, the truth of how people would feel upon hearing the news reflects her own reaction. It's something that would be really hard to imagine, finding out you are considered both sexes, and that you can't reproduce. This is one of the things that had me slightly disappointed... there wasn't much in the book about her lack of reproductive organs. I know how extreme those emotions would be for me but maybe it would be so overshadowed by the other (learning your intersex) that it was rightfully placed on the sidelines. I really liked how the Author had the characters knowledge slowly develop (along with the reader). She portrayed that pain very well and it would be hard not to sympathize with the main character. However, I do wish that the plot itself was a little more solid, it was another wishy washy background piece that I didn't feel connected to at all. I wanted Kristin to overcome it all but I didn't really understand the reward in the end. Ultimately I would recommend this one to anyone unfamiliar with intersex, any and all teens, adult parents of teens and pretty much anyone who wants to open their mind some more. I think this is a nice blend of informational with a splash of teen angst, and even though the plot didn't grab me, it wasn't enough to leave a bad taste in my mouth. If anything I'm coming away from this book with more knowledge and a better understanding, one that I think everyone needs to be enlightened by. I foresee this book becoming challenged and banned in schools but I can honestly say this is as tame as a baby kitten, the sex scenes are very light and it would be the perfect book to open up the eyes of the youth to something that happens in nature. I think the important message is that this is something that naturally happens in the world, you can't deny that, I just don't see an argument to be had here. I think this is why I'm surprised this is a topic that hasn't been dealt with much, but now I take a bow to the Author... pave the way to enlightenment, I'll stand behind you. Happy Reading, AmberBug

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At the Shores

At the Shores Thomas Rogers 4 / 5	Published 1980 First Sentences "For as far back in his consciousness as he could go there had always been three women in his life: his mother, his sister, and his girl. The difference was that Mother and Sister were always the same women, whereas the role of girl had been filled by what seemed like a cast of thousands."
Publisher's Description: At the Shores is a classic novel of love in America. Set in the Indiana dunes and Chicago, it tells the story of Jerry Engels, an appealing, handsome, middle-class boy, who even in elementary school finds himself forever in love: "He loved the girls in his class, the girls on the block, the maid at home, his sister's friends, some of his mother's friends. . . . He even loved girls he just happened to see out the window of the car." In high school--the renowned University of Chicago Laboratory High School--he strives to make the grades his academically superb sister made and his parents expect, but as the world becomes erotically charged for him, he finds it hard to study. Unlike other boys, who live according to the "approved doctrine that there are other things in the world besides girls--politics, cars, sports, finding out about things and fixing things, and making money"--Jerry cares only about girls. For him, "girls are a kind of blessing. When he saw a girl like Betty Lomax walking through Belfield Hall with a fresh flower tucked into her hair, he felt like kissing her out of gratitude for having bought that flower and put it in her hair." Then, at the end of his junior year, he falls deeply, passionately in love with Rosalind Ingleside, the most beautiful, respected, and wealthy girl in school, and for almost all of one summer Jerry's dream of loving and being loved is fulfilled. "If I had a class in American Adolescence, I'd teach At the Shores in tandem with The Catcher in the Rye and Growing Up Absurd. This meticulously perceived and modest novel about growing up in America anything but absurd is probably closer to more lives than we might suspect. It does wonders for one's sense of reality."  - Philip Roth
Dear Reader, I cannot for the life of me recall why I picked this book up. It was published 35 years ago, and is not widely known. But I was reading something, somewhere that mentioned it and I wanted to check it out. I had to go through my work library consortium to find a copy over at Bard College; it is not available anywhere in my local public library system and wasn’t at my own library. So clearly, I had to do a bit of work to get my hands on a copy! And yet I wish I could recall why I was so eager to do so. I know part of what happened was I thought to myself, “Hmm, this book looks good, and has some good reviews. I am going to put the request into the system because it should take a little while for it to make its way to me.” And that is exactly how things worked out. I received the book after I had forgotten I’d put the order in for it. I took it home, and began reading it, but the book is disappointingly difficult to get into because of the dense typeset and unbroken swaths of text. I honestly think that is part of what took me so long (a month!) to get through this otherwise good book: the author shunned the notion of chapters, which okay, I can work with (let’s not talk about how long the amazing Gravity’s Rainbow is taking me, for instance!). However, the author didn’t even use a line break to separate sections, which I think it just unreasonable. I would go vast chunks of the book without ever encountering a break, and then I’d find several within a few pages of each other. It felt as if there was no rhyme or reason to the choice to use or not use them, either. All of this to say: Rogers really could have used a good editor, which I think could have brought such a gem of a book to a much wider audience, too. It is unfortunate! Because really, I did like this book. I found myself avoiding reading it because I often faced a long, unbroken chunk and not much time to devote to it, so I would pick something else up in the meantime. However, when I did get a chance to really delve into it, I was easily drawn into Jerry Engels’ world. The very white, very privileged world of a boy growing up in postwar Chicago, which oddly enough is kind of right up my alley (not the privileged part, but the young boy coming of age in the 1950s part). I don’t know why I have such a soft spot for those stories, but I do! In any case, the book revolves around the adolescence of girl-crazy Jerry, who finds himself drawn to females even from a very young age. There were some charming anecdotes from his earlier years, but the book sticks mainly to the story of his seventeenth year, when he falls in love for the first time and also loses his virginity. Since this is the true crux of the story I won’t go too far into it - suffice it to say that one reviewer (I wish I could recall where I saw this) pretty aptly called the book something like “the horny life & times of Jerry Engels.” So yeah, there is a lot of talk of sex, but what do you expect from a teenaged boy? If you can get past that part, the book definitely does move on. Taken as a whole (and not getting too distracted or annoyed by Jerry’s incessant thinking about sex for a good few score of pages), I can see why some have compared Jerry Engels to Holden Caulfield. Both boys learn some hard truths about life and grow to see things from a more mature viewpoint. (I don’t think that is a spoiler for this book.) I liked the open-ended way Rogers left things with Jerry, as well.  The water theme in the book intrigues me enough that I want to write briefly on that, as well. I thought it was interesting how the book’s title refers to the families’ summer homes on the shores of Lake Michigan, as well as how Jerry is kind of on the brink of something big and life-changing. Additionally, water plays a huge role in the book, both in moving the story along and, ultimately, ending it. Water being such a symbol of cleansing and renewing makes me think that this allusion wasn’t a mistake. I’ll have to think more on this.  And lastly, I wanted to speak a bit on the different types of women Jerry interacts with in his life, since women are of tantamount importance to him. He has a very permissive sister, a sympathetic but largely absent (in the book, not in his life) mother, an uncertain girlfriend, a bossy female friend who is like a sister, another female friend he doesn’t know as well who is portrayed as somewhat slutty, and then there is the actual prostitute...they all seem somewhat typecast (and by the way, was that a lesbian couple thrown in there casually at the end of the book?), but all so interestingly typecast. It makes me wonder about what their characters were supposed to represent - maybe it’s some sort of Freudian Madonna-Whore Complex thing? Ach, this is all too much for me to contemplate thoroughly right now…it is time for me to go to bed. So goodnight, Dear Reader! Yours, Arianna

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Adam

Adam Ariel Schrag 2/5	Published 2014 First Sentence "Adam stared up at the tree leading to Kelsey Winslow's bedroom window."
Publisher's Description: When Adam Freedman -- a skinny, awkward, inexperienced teenager from Piedmont, California -- goes to stay with his older sister Casey in New York City, he is hopeful that his life is about to change. And it sure does. It is the Summer of 2006. Gay marriage and transgender rights are in the air, and Casey has thrust herself into a wild lesbian subculture. Soon Adam is tagging along to underground clubs, where there are hot older women everywhere he turns. It takes some time for him to realize that many in this new crowd assume he is trans -- a boy who was born a girl. Why else would this baby-faced guy always be around? Then Adam meets Gillian, the girl of his dreams -- but she couldn't possibly be interested in him. Unless passing as a trans guy might actually work in his favor... Ariel Schrag's scathingly funny and poignant debut novel puts a fresh spin on questions of love, attraction, self-definition, and what it takes to be at home in your own skin.
Dear Reader, Gah! This book is so frustrating. I'm really mad at it. Maybe that was the point? Adam is a typical teen boy with no real knowledge of the world around him. He travels to NYC to stay with his college-age sister for the summer, during which time he becomes enlightened to the LGBT community. His sister, lesbian dating transgender, brings him to parties and introduces him to a whole new world. The potential to be something great was here, and the Author did a great job (in my opinion as a cis-female) giving a nice overview and facts surrounding what someone transgender has to go through. While the beginning of the book started impressing me, the lies start stacking up... and if there is one thing I hate more than anything is the kind of lies that can destroy someone. Adam stacked his lies SO high that you knew it would crumble before the end. I don't want to give much away but it's hard for me because the majority of my gripes come from that awful ending. I'm going to make this review very brief because of spoilers BUT I will say the message the Author was heading towards was extremely thoughtful and intriguing. However, the ending unraveled everything the Author worked towards in one fell swoop. The audacity to write something so well researched and informative but then wipe all that away with a terribly offensive ending, was heartbreaking. Maybe this is what makes the book controversial but I'd rather have not read it at all. I threw the book at the wall in anguish at how terrible this made me feel, I was angry at everything it represented and I guess that might be why I should have rated it higher, it made me feel something, right? I just can't get past it... For those of you who know the ending, I'd gladly discuss this in the comments (those who don't want spoilers, avoid the comments please). Happy Reading, AmberBug

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Beautiful You: A Novel

Beautiful You: A Novel Chuck Palahniuk 4/5	Published October 21st, 2014 First Sentence "Even as Penny was attacked, the judge merely stared. "
Publisher's Description: "A billion husbands are about to be replaced." From the author of Fight Club, the classic portrait of the damaged contemporary male psyche, now comes this novel about the apocalyptic marketing possibilities of female pleasure. Sisters will be doing it for themselves. And doing it. And doing it. And doing it some more . . . Penny Harrigan is a low-level associate in a big Manhattan law firm with an apartment in Queens and no love life at all. So it comes as a great shock when she finds herself invited to dinner by one C. Linus Maxwell, aka "Climax-Well," a software mega-billionaire and lover of the most gorgeous and accomplished women on earth. After dining at Manhattan's most exclusive restaurant, he whisks Penny off to a hotel suite in Paris, where he proceeds, notebook in hand, to bring her to previously undreamed-of heights of orgasmic pleasure for days on end. What's not to like? This: Penny discovers that she is a test subject for the final development of a line of sex toys to be marketed in a nationwide chain of boutiques called Beautiful You. So potent and effective are these devices that women by the millions line up outside the stores on opening day and then lock themselves in their room with them and stop coming out. Except for batteries. Maxwell's plan for erotically enabled world domination must be stopped. But how?
Dear Reader, Reviewing this is going to be HARD, really HARD, super rock HARD, throbbing rock HARD. Blushing yet? You will be after you read this. All you folks who read "Fifty Shades" and thought it was "so naughty" better not pick this book up... you might DIE from the lack of constraint Palahniuk uses. Just like all of Chuck's books, this should have warning labels slapped all over it. As the saying goes... if you don't have the stomach for it, get out of the kitchen?!? (Okay, that might not be the exact saying, but it works).  Right away, reading the description, we know this book is centered around sex, sex, more sex and sex toys. Nobody should be reviewing this book in shock about the subject matter, clearly if they do... they don't know Chuck very well. I almost want to say this book was made as a response to those who thought "Fifty Shades" so taboo (because it sure seemed like a complete farce of that book) but I think the intention was only to brushed upon it. This book is in NO way a better written copy but Palahniuk does include quite a few hysterical jabs here and there. Suck it, E.L. James! (which is what I imagine Chuck saying while writing this book). A friend of mine, Shane T. French (amazing/talented and up-and-coming graphic novel/comic writer), has brought it to my attention that Chuck Palahniuk waited until his parents died in order to write and publish this book. Nice little fact, one that gives you a better idea of what you'd be faced reading if you pick this one up. Beautiful You might not have my favorite plot line in the Palahniuk collection, but I do think he has used his super power to bring his fans what we've wanted. Penny (such a classic and innocent name) finds herself tangled with a billionaire (cough, cough, fifty shades of PLOT line anyone?), where he proposes to pleasure her with all his newest techy toys, giving her the highest amount of pleasure imaginable. Little does Penny know, there is a plan in place to use these sex toys for his own evil plans. Beautiful You has sex, crime, danger, espionage, adventure, exotic travel, addiction, shall I go on? Who wouldn't want to read a book like that? If this review had a little too much shock for you, don't bother reading this. Palahniuk has his following and I'm always riding up front, salivating at the mouth for his next masterpiece. You don't have to like this book. However, I do. Pass the lube, because this book is like the biggest slip and slide you have ever seen. Happy Reading, AmberBug P.S. - Guess who has tickets to see Palahniuk in Brooklyn, NY on HALLOWEEN? Yep, both Arianna and I do. Stay tuned for that event post (as long as I can sit still enough to take notes).

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