Poor Showing

As in, I've made a poor showing when it comes to reading this month. It's the 29th of January (best day e-ver) and I've read a whopping two books. Yep, just two. I'm well into two others and I've read nearly the equivalent of a full book for school, but still...I've only finished two books. (ETA: It's now actually February 1st an I did manage to finish a third book last month. w00t.)

I pretty much agreed with a bunch of friends who read Hero by Perry Moore: the superheroes are all painfully exact ripoffs of the most well-known comic book heroes (Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, you get the idea); the superhero storyline (the central plot, I suppose) is predictable and not terribly interesting; the romantic storyline seems forced; and, yet, despite all that, this is a great father-son story. And I'm a sucker for a great father-son story. Their relationship is so authentic (and relatable) to me, a depiction of familial love that really captures how complicated it can be. Hal loves Thom, so he makes a lot of sacrifices; Thom loves Hal, so he feels incredibly guilty about those sacrifices; Hal and Thom love each other so much and recognize that, at the time the book starts, they really only have each other, so they both fear rejection from the other if their deepest secrets are revealed; etc. The fact that they love each other is not forced on you, but is evident in such real ways, most especially in how that very positive emotion can actually be the source of strife between them. Hal Creed is a really gut-wrenching character and his own son recognizes it and reacts with myriad feelings you might expect: gratitude, embarrassment, guilt, sadness, anger, confusion.

By the way, if you're looking for more great fathers in fiction (and by great, I mean the characters are multi-dimensional and interesting, not necessarily that the men themselves are people you'll admire and enjoy), try Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee (one of my favorite books of all time, it explores concepts of language, family, and identity and the interplay between the three) and You Must Remember This by Joyce Carol Oates.

The second book I read this year was Graceling by Kristin Cashore. Loved it. Loved it, loved it, loved it. I'll start with the concession that the plot was just a little weak, in a way that I attribute to the fact that Graceling is Cashore's first novel. There are occasional holes, jumps, and tenuous links, but I think that style will be ironed out and strengthened in her next novel. My other objection to the plot was the late entrance of the villain; it was as though the climax of the book happened at the wrong time. Like most fantasy novels I've read, Graceling has an action-adventure plot and it definitely plays second-fiddle to the characters. Who I love. I tend to prefer character-driven novels to plot-driven ones (as you might imagine if you are familiar with my love of romance novels, since the plots of those are often pretty darn similar).

There are many things I enjoyed about Graceling, but I'll just go ahead and tell you a little about Katsa, the main character, and I think you'll see why I enjoyed this book so much. Katsa does not want to get married or have children. Cashore makes this pretty clear early on, so I of course thought, "oh, well she must hate children." Nope, she likes them well enough. "Oh, well, then she must be troubled. Women in novels only ever don't want to have children because they were abused or because they have low self-esteem and don't want their kids to be like them. Considering Katsa's a killer, I guess that's mildly understandable." Nope, her childhood wasn't perfect, but nobody's is. "Oh, oh no...Cashore didn't use any of the other conventions to make Katsa change her mind and start popping them out, so she's going to go...there...to the place where Katsa falls in love and then, oh my gosh, just can't wait to start reproducing because that's what women do when they fall in love. No. No. No!" Nope, Katsa falls in love. They don't get married. They don't have kids. They're cool. Can there please be more female leads like this? Please?