Teen Survey: Anders

There's nothing like discussing a good book at 7 in the morning with an awesome co-worker. Meet Anders, who is probably either reading or going on a sunrise run as I type this. We've been recommending books to each other all summer and we've had lengthy discussions about titles such as I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip. by John Donovan and Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan. After exchanging half a dozen books with Anders, I asked him if he wanted to fill out the teen survey for GuysLitWire. He said sure, and so I now give the floor to him.

Name: Anders

Age: 15

Books recently read for fun: Hero; Will Grayson, Will Grayson; Looking for Alaska; Lord of the Flies

Books recently read for school: Frankenstein; Beowulf; Dorian Gray

Books in your to-read pile: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas; Watchers (I seldom have many books to read)

Favorite authors: I have none - a story is a story no matter who the author is. It's the story that captures me and pulls me in, and I really don't pay attention to who wrote it up (maybe I should?).

Favorite books: Loamhedge; Brave New World; The Tao of Pooh; Hero; The Hobbit; THE ALCHEMIST!!!!!!!!!!

Favorite genres: The good ones. I'll pick up anything that is fun to read.

Why do you like to read? I'm not sure. Because... I find it entertaining? I enjoy reading someone's story and making my own speculations.

Favorite movies: Inception; Ratatouille; Wall-E; Laputa: Castle in the Sky

Favorite musicians/singers/types of music: Cash Cash; The Script; Vampire Weekend; Ingrid Michaelson; Boys Like Girls; (Alternative); (recently) Two Door Cinema Club

Do you listen to music (or TV) while you read? No. I find it distracting unless it's a school book that I HAVE to read and it's really boring (like The Bridge of San Luis Rey). Sometimes the assigned books are so bad that I lose concentration if I DON'T have music on.

Do you finish every book you start? Almost always. If I start a book, I feel uneasy not finishing it. I might take a week break, but eventually I've gotta finish.

Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes

Tales of the Madman Underground has been reviewed on Guys Lit Wire twice. The first review (over a year ago) was rather lukewarm about the book, clearly not a big fan. The second review, from February, was glowing. I just read the book myself and think I need to break the tie. And by doing this I hope I get as many people as possible to read Tales of the Madman Underground, because it is one of the best written and boldest young adult books I’ve read. How good is it? It is Robert-Cormier-Good. That is the name that kept zipping through my brain as I made my way through all of the adventures of the madman underground. It is outstanding. Read it.

I was born in 1960, but I consider myself a kid of the seventies because those are the years of my youth that I remember. This story takes place in 1973; in fact, all 532 pages take place over just six days in 1973. John Barnes nails the seventies. Imagine for a moment how different life was in 1973. Not just in the obvious ways, with technology or politics, but in how people treated each other, or something more mundane, like how we saw smoking or picking up dog poop. Reading this story immersed me right back into those years as well as the realities of being a teenage boy. The book rings with such an authentic voice, that I was sure Barnes was also a teenager in the seventies. I looked him up, and sure enough, in 1973 he was 16.

Karl Shoemaker is starting his senior year in high school in Lightsburg, his small Ohio town. How small is it? No-movie-theater-small. In many ways the town is dying, both literally and spiritually. There seems to be more empty, boarded-up stores than open stores. And the people of Lightsburg – like so many towns big and small all across our nation – are hurting. They are struggling with alcohol and relationships and anger and drugs and the aimless drift of life. And some of them are just awful people and abusive parents. Karl’s dad died a few years before and his mom is a wreck. She loves him, but she is an endless partier and an alcoholic, and so was Karl as well as his dad, but Karl saw his ugly future in a bottle of booze and quit and goes to AA. I know this sounds depressing, but in fact, the book glows with wisdom and in a way I see Karl as a teenage philosopher.

What's It All For? The Carpet Makers

Oh, the tedium of our lives. Waking up, staggering to the bathroom, brushing our teeth, showering, dressing, stumbling out the door to work or school, sitting all day at an uncomfortable desk...

You have no idea.

In Andreas Eschbach's science fiction novel The Carpet Makers, there are artisans who spend their entire lives weaving carpets from the hair of their wives and daughters, thread by thread, morning to night, marriage to death. This holy chore in service to the Emperor provides rugs for the grand palace of a vast interstellar empire, and the entire economy of many planets depends on it.

Until the Emperor dies, of course, and a new government must free these enslaved planets and discover the true purpose of the carpets that never made it to the imperial palace.

What would you do if you found out that everything you've lived and worked for is nothing like you've been told?

Such is the dilemma of the characters in The Carpet Makers. The story passes adeptly from character to character, chapter to chapter, story to story, as we watch fascinating people of all kinds struggle for freedom and meaning against the inertia of history. Some are rebels against the status quo, others are loyalists to the way things have always worked. They live, they struggle, they inquire...all in pursuit of the truth.

None of them can take the value of their existence on faith anymore, and this novel is an excellent reminder that the duty of an intelligent person is to ask questions and resist assumptions. Change, even of the smallest kind, can overwhelm us all without any warning, and it is the adaptable and inquisitive who survive.

Beautifully written, clear and compelling, The Carpet Makers is an old-school science fiction story full of fascinating cultures and far-flung ideas, the kind that keep you thinking long after reading it -- perhaps about just what the woven carpets of your life are really for.

Two Years Before the Mast by Richard Dana

"Two Years Before The Mast" is only partly a sailing book. It's also a history of California before the Gold Rush.
When it came out in the 1840s, there were -- I assume -- plenty of sailing books. But there were no books about California. (Or at least not many in English.) Because almost no one had been there.
So when college boy Richard Dana signed up for a sailing voyage and ends up stuck in California, it was the perfect opportunity for him to look around and write down his impressions of the place.
When he penned his book he couldn't have known how interested people would eventually be in California.
Because when he was there it was mostly empty, with just a few Mexican missions and towns. These places weren't much but they have familiar names: Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco. Dana was there when cow hides were about the only thing they had to offer.

Back to the Magic - SPELLWRIGHT

When I was growing up, I adored high fantasy. I couldn't stop reading about wizards attempting to foil the End of the World^TM. Give me Gandalf. Give me Raistlin. Or Pug. And when I played Dungeons & Dragons, I always wanted to play a magic-user. So, the kid inside me was thrilled at the pages of Spellwright.

Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers

Richie Perry wasn't supposed to be in Vietnam. Yeah, he'd enlisted in the Army after graduating from high school because he couldn't afford college and someone had to support his family, especially his younger brother, Ken. But an Army doctor said Richie had a bum knee, so he wasn't fit for combat duty. And definitely not for duty in Vietnam.

But there was a paperwork mix up. Richie was shipped off to Vietnam while the rest of his unit was sent to Germany, and although Richie arrived in Vietnam, his medical papers didn't seem to have made it at all.

For The Win: Candidate for the Leaderboard?

I still haven't read Cory Doctorow's Little Brother--it seems like it's on perma-checkout at my library—but I DID fortuitously run across his next book for young adults: a massive (pun intended) online gaming epic titled For The Win.

I liked a lot of things about this book. If you've ever been involved in any kind of role-playing gaming, online or offline, you'll enjoy the familiar gaming lingo. And if you're familiar with classic video and computer games, you'll get the references (I particularly liked the idea of Mushroom Kingdom, an online game set in Nintendo's Mario universe).

I also liked the premise. The setting is not so far into the future, and online gaming has become a enormous corporate venture comparable in scope with any other major industry, with huge portions of the gaming market owned by Coca-Cola (HA!) and all kinds of unscrupulous underworld types dealing in a thriving not-so-black-market of virtual game gold and valuable in-game items. These "gold farmers" employ young kids in sweatshops all over Asia, purportedly paying them to play games all day, roaming the game universes in gangs, highly trained to win the greatest amount of gold possible from in-game quests, which they then re-sell to the highest bidder. But what happens when those sweatshop workers decide their conditions should be just a bit better, when they decide they have rights just like any other worker? At heart this is a book that drives home the value of unions during a time when they seem to be falling out of favor, and because of that alone, it's critically important.

Seth Baumgartner's Love Manifesto

Eric Luper's latest, Seth Baumgartner's Love Manifesto is fun, funny and well-crafted. It's just right for music lovers or for someone who has been dumped for the first time or somebody who has kept secrets or plays golf. It's an excellent end-of-summer read that is light and easy, with an engaging voice and some memorable characters.

Seth Baumgartner has just suffered a brutal break-up in Applebee's on his girlfriend's lunch break. To make the situation even worse, while it's happening, he sees his father on a date with a woman who is definitely not his mom. After this, he loses his job. So life sucks, more or less. Seth decides to start a podcast called The Love Manifesto so that he can "examine what love is, why love is, and why we are stupid enough to keep going back for more." The podcast, a new summer job, his wacko best friend Dmitri and Dmitri's suddenly-sexy sister Audrey, all help Seth to make some sense of the complicated universe of love in all its forms.

Felipe Smith redefines manga

Or at least is attempting to with his new manga series Peepo Choo, the first volume of which is out now from Vertical. It's a fantastic series, and so compelling I wrote this review for the website comicsvillage.com as soon as I finished reading it. Apologies for the cross-posting, but I wanted to bring it to the attention of more readers, especially after reading this great interview with Smith by Deb Aoki from Ask.com.

I will say this about Felipe Smith--he is not for the faint of heart. His work is ribald, a brusque, fierce, unrelenting satire that attacks everyone and everything in its path. Nevertheless, he is awesome, and I think his goal--creating a global manga--gets closer to that mark than anything ever has.

Once more into the breach...

I should not be surprised that Ellen Hopkins was disinvited from a teen youth lit festival in Texas and yet I am stunned to see a librarian was involved in this mess. Leila has a roundup of links from Ellen and several others who have since pulled out in disgust over the matter, so she is the place to start in case you aren't up on it. Tera Lynn Childs also has a longer piece up at RT Book Reviews on why she chose to pull out.

All we can do is let the world know about this mess, support the authors in their hour of need, mouth off big time about the librarian and superintendent involved (how could a librarian of all people support dumping an acclaimed author from a literary event? Who the heck is this person???) and yet again, stand up, brush ourselves off, and say we are mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore.

It never gets easier does it? Being on the side of the side of the angels just never gets easier.

(And yes, I do think speaking the truth - especially the ugly brutal truth so often in Ellen's books - is the side of the angels. If you don't like her novels then simply do not buy them. That's all you have to do.)