Malinda Lo duology

Adaptation and Inheritance, Malinda Lo, 2012 and 2013. Man, when YA is good, it can be so good. I really liked these, despite some caveats. They're really well-constructed... there was some stuff that was like "why this??" and then I realized how some of the different pieces fit thematically together or informed a different conflict. The opening of Adaptation is impressively strong, going from a contemporary realistic context (teens at a debate tournament) and escalating steadily through a disaster scenario into the science-fictional main plot. And despite a trope that bugs me being central to the plot, it's handled in an interesting way that worked for me. I would definitely recommend these if you like YA SF. (Content notes for homophobia, racism, and threatened rape.)

Behind this cut, I'm going to talk about my caveats, which have to do with the romantic plotline and how the characters think about it. Major spoilers for both books. ( Read more... )

happiness meter

I'm kind of a sucker for books that seem like they would be an amusing or interesting pair, so when I spotted both More Happy Than Not and Happy All The Time on my big list I was like, hm.

More Happy Than Not is a 2015 YA by Adam Silvera of the genre I think of as "keep our queer youth alive", which, let me be clear, I think is an excellent genre and as important a purpose for literature as anything else you could name. If one queer kid (particularly queer POC kids in poverty like the protagonist) gets a moment of recognition or comfort or encouragement from this, who even cares what some middle-aged white tourist thinks? On the other hand, I don't necessarily feel that I need to support this genre by personally reading it (except insofar as I might want to read current-year examples if I wanted to support them for awards recognition - this book did have an SF element of the "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" sort), see my whole ongoing ambivalence about YA and trying to make better predictions about which YA books I will actually enjoy. Which, I mean, is hard - a lot of people compared this to Aristotle and Dante crossed with "Eternal Sunshine" and I liked both of those things, so who even knows, I'm just cranky and picky and old. Major content notes for suicide and homophobic violence.

I actually read More Happy Than Not back around, like, Christmas, and then I started the other one, which I had thought had been recced as a romance novel, and was like, what the hell is this, and wasn't going to read it after all, but then I ended up reading it because the alternative was actually doing something I was supposed to be doing and who wants to do that. So. Happy All The Time is 1978 litfic by Laurie Colwin about upper-middle-class East Coasters, specifically two couples and various quirky secondary characters, as written by someone who's seen "Philadelphia Story" a bunch of times and really likes writing quippy dialogue. I mostly found this to be of anthropological interest (my god everyone smoked so much in 1978! the novelty of a male secretary!).