![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
For awhile I had an informal policy of only writing about books that a) I liked and wanted to recommend or b) were by already-popular authors, addressing the question of whether their latest works lived up to their earlier ones. Lately I've had the urge to review everything I read even if I'm not recommending it. ::shrug:: I guess we'll see how long this lasts?
The Lightning Thief is the first of the best-selling Percy Jackson books. I read this because one of my reading goals is to stay conversant with contemporary children's fantasy. It was reasonably clever, competently executed, I would recommend it without hesitation to a middle-grade fantasy reader looking for more fantasy to read, and I have absolutely no intention of reading the rest of the series myself.
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda - cute middle-grade novel told in a first person "case files" style by various sixth-graders. I liked that one of the main characters is quirky in a way that, reading as an adult, I read as being non-neurotypical/on the spectrum, but there's no labeling/diagnosis in the text, his weirdness is just part of who he is in the way that other characters also have their quirks.
Runaway is the third and last of a YA trilogy by Meg Cabot, a tragedy about how the ways that others see us trump the ways we see ourselves in shaping our lives. No, wait, that's not it! It's a totally fun series about how, like, if you got brain-transplanted into the body of a supermodel, you would get to be a supermodel! Like, omigod, yay! Previously forced by plot contrivance to pretend to be her body's former occupant, by the end of this last book our main character has the freedom to be and do whatever she wants. But she's adopted the habits and values of the supermodel so thoroughly that little trace of her original interests and opinions remains. Cabot's biases run counter to my own; I'm sure I would have been more sympathetic if, instead of losing interest in video gaming and discovering the importance of clothing and makeup, it had gone the other way. (My opinion of makeup is something like my opinion of Morris dancing. By all means, apply your pigments! Wave your hankies! I like to read stories where people from the teevee have sex, we all have our hobbies! Where it pisses me off is when it gets universalized, like, of course you can't expect to be taken seriously at that job interview if you show up without your bells on. Of course guys won't know you're interested if they don't see you working on your capers. That's obviously ludicrous when it's Morris dancing but somehow becomes conventional wisdom when it's makeup.) The real problem is that Cabot is trying to argue that you can be into being pretty and also still be smart and interesting, but she's failing to show us the smart and interesting part. Opting into pretty *has* come with a price for our heroine, and I can't tell whether Cabot didn't see that, or just got lazy and figured we'd be distracted by the romance working out. I will always love Cabot for Ready Or Not, but this series falls far short of that standard.
The Lightning Thief is the first of the best-selling Percy Jackson books. I read this because one of my reading goals is to stay conversant with contemporary children's fantasy. It was reasonably clever, competently executed, I would recommend it without hesitation to a middle-grade fantasy reader looking for more fantasy to read, and I have absolutely no intention of reading the rest of the series myself.
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda - cute middle-grade novel told in a first person "case files" style by various sixth-graders. I liked that one of the main characters is quirky in a way that, reading as an adult, I read as being non-neurotypical/on the spectrum, but there's no labeling/diagnosis in the text, his weirdness is just part of who he is in the way that other characters also have their quirks.
Runaway is the third and last of a YA trilogy by Meg Cabot, a tragedy about how the ways that others see us trump the ways we see ourselves in shaping our lives. No, wait, that's not it! It's a totally fun series about how, like, if you got brain-transplanted into the body of a supermodel, you would get to be a supermodel! Like, omigod, yay! Previously forced by plot contrivance to pretend to be her body's former occupant, by the end of this last book our main character has the freedom to be and do whatever she wants. But she's adopted the habits and values of the supermodel so thoroughly that little trace of her original interests and opinions remains. Cabot's biases run counter to my own; I'm sure I would have been more sympathetic if, instead of losing interest in video gaming and discovering the importance of clothing and makeup, it had gone the other way. (My opinion of makeup is something like my opinion of Morris dancing. By all means, apply your pigments! Wave your hankies! I like to read stories where people from the teevee have sex, we all have our hobbies! Where it pisses me off is when it gets universalized, like, of course you can't expect to be taken seriously at that job interview if you show up without your bells on. Of course guys won't know you're interested if they don't see you working on your capers. That's obviously ludicrous when it's Morris dancing but somehow becomes conventional wisdom when it's makeup.) The real problem is that Cabot is trying to argue that you can be into being pretty and also still be smart and interesting, but she's failing to show us the smart and interesting part. Opting into pretty *has* come with a price for our heroine, and I can't tell whether Cabot didn't see that, or just got lazy and figured we'd be distracted by the romance working out. I will always love Cabot for Ready Or Not, but this series falls far short of that standard.
