Let It Snow (2008)

Authors: Maureen Johnson / John Green / Lauren Myracle  |  Page Count: 368

'It's such a disaster, whenever, in the course of human relationships, someone begins to chisel away at the wall of separation...'

A collection of three novellas, one from each of the authors mentioned above, with a different take on the theme of 'holiday romance'. The holiday, if you hadn't guessed, is Christmas. The individual stories are linked by location and certain events overlap more than once, so it's more like a novel with changing authors as opposed to a traditional anthology collection.

Appropriately, snow covered the ground on the days I read the book. The windows were closed and curtains purposefully pulled to hide it, but I knew it was there and I'd been caught in it a few times while out. It'll sound ridiculous, but I believe that being cold helped me appreciate more the situations the characters found themselves in. I'd hoped for some emotional warmth from the text to counteract the chilly settings, and in all three cases it was delivered; although the levels at which it was apparent did vary from one to the next.

It would be easy to single out a favourite, but the preference would be based on an empathetic response only and that's not a solid basis upon which to lay a criticism. None of the three stories was badly written. Each author had a clear vision that was communicated intelligently but in a slightly different way. One thing that's consistent throughout is the use of a first-person narrative, making the best of what the technique offers and skipping easily around the limitations.

I admit my instinct upon seeing the words 'holiday' and 'romance' together was urging me to snub it in favour of something more manly, but instinct was wrong on this occasion. It isn't chick-fic. It's suitable for all, or at the very least anyone who's ever been in an emotionally-challenging relationship.

If you're attracted to the collection because you're a fan of one specific author, try to resist the temptation to go directly to his/her story first. They’re arranged like they are for a reason and work better when read in that order.

3½ pigs of fate out of 5

ICO: Castle in the Mist (2008)

Author:  Miyuki Miyabe  |  Translator:  Alexander O. Smith  |  Page Count: 370

'Whatever it was that dripped from the cage, it was blacker than pitch,
the colour of melted shadow.'

The story as presented in the ICO video game (2001) was purposefully vague. It encouraged players to speculate about the backstory of the characters. The act of filling in the blanks created a more personal experience, making us not just the protagonist but also the teller, the narrator of the story as it was being lived in real time. Reading someone else's version of those events is interesting, but when put into context, isn't a published version of such simply fan-fiction sold at RRP?

Regardless of whether or not that's a fair assessment, I made sure while reading to judge the work for what it did well (or otherwise) with regards world-building, characterisation, etc, and not for being different to my own interpretation of the game's story; to have did otherwise would be a disservice to everyone involved.

I was wholly ignorant of Miyuki Miyabe's reputation in Japan. She has a huge catalogue of titles available. Castle in the Mist is her seventh novel to be translated into English. In all honesty I thought it was a first novel, period. The stiffness of the dialogue and the formulaic spoon-feeding of conventions that make the majority of fantasy novels so bland is adhered to from the very first page. The stiffness may in part be explained by it being a translation—there's a definite lack of love and flair inherent in that aspect—so I can't say with any certainty if a poetic sensibility is inherently absent from the work or just missing from the English language version. I'm not able to read Japanese.

Things pick up a little when the story delves into Yorda's past. The author is more comfortable and thus more successful exploring things from a female perspective, which makes sense, but even then the story never dares to break away from a safety zone or a trite, established way of genre thinking. It's a typical fantasy about a Princess in a castle, a cruel and overbearing guardian that stifles her, and a male saviour with selflessness and innocence in his arsenal.

Kudos to the publisher, Haikasoru, for being brave and taking a chance on it. The game didn't sell in huge numbers in the West, so I can't imagine the target audience for the novel was projected as groundbreaking, but, even so, they didn't opt for cheap paper to cut costs. It's a beautifully presented book.

1½ misshapen shades out of 5

An Abundance Of Katherines (2006)

Author: John Green | Page Count: 236

It kept the loneliness of crushlessness from being entirely crushing. Driving was a kind of thinking, the only kind he could then tolerate. But still, the thought lurked out there, just beyond the reach of his headlights: he'd been dumped. By a girl named Katherine. For the nineteenth time.

Colin Singleton is an awkward former child prodigy who has yet to live up to his potential. Much to his chagrin, he has yet to turn his intellect into anything resembling extraordinary; what he calls a "eureka moment". This is only exacerbated by his girlfriend, a girl named Katherine, dumping him; a scenario that has happened to him a total of 19 times. To help him heal from the breakup and assess his life, his middle eastern friend, Hassan,  takes him on a road trip.

Colin's obsession with the name Katherine is one of his many eccentricities which also include excessive anagramming of words and phrases and adding lists in the middle of sentences. Since he cannot seem to make himself matter to the world, mattering to his girlfriends worked as a substitute until they inevitably crush him. Colin's motivation for learning and excellence contrast with Hassan who has no game with the ladies and is excessively lazy. Watching Judge Judy instead of enrolling in college classes is his favorite past-time as well as jabbing Colin on his awkwardness and atheism. Both are set to learn something on this road trip.

Colin is supposedly unlikeable, but I found him much more interesting than the protagonist of author John Green's previous novel, but this second novel is full of his non condescending and flawed, but personal characterizations that would become even more refined in his later novels. The inserted footnotes are both informative and entertaining and similar to the list interjections that Colin favors which makes me feel Green has put some of himself in the character. This only helped with the engagingly thoughtful ideas that really make the book worthy of any reader and not just the "young adults" it is targeted at.

4½ Archduke Franz Ferdinand out of 5

Looking For Alaska (2005)

Author: John Green | Page Count: 221

"Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage, and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane."

Miles has grown fed up with his Florida high school where he has no friends and, with the help of his habit of memorizing famous people's last words, convinces his parents to let him transfer to a more prestigious boarding school. Despite failing to reinvent his antisocial personality, he gains some new friends and is introduced to and immediately falls in love with Alaska; a beautiful and buxom girl who is everything he is not. She is fearless and impulsive and prone to rash behavior and mood swings. Through her and his new friends he just may manage to break out of his shell and learn more about himself.

The writing is solid with some likeable and interesting characters though I found Miles partly insufferable and his devotion to Alaska felt rushed. Maybe I just read the book too fast, but the time it takes place in is too short to inspire the lifelong love Miles says his infatuation has become. Or maybe that is partly the point as despite his intellectual aptitude he is still an inexperienced teenager in his existential crises, adolescent adventures and hilarious sexual encounters. The "controversial" sexual content isn't, but it is good at conveying what it was meant to and anyone who objects to it must not realize that teenagers somewhere are having sexy times right now. The introspective thoughts and themes still make this flawed book a great read that is worth dissecting and digesting.

4 Homicidal Swans out of 5

The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Author: John Green  |  Page Count: 313

“I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have and I am in love with you.”

I’m too old to say that I want to be like John Green when I grow up. Disturbing as it is, I’m already grown up. So, I want to be like John Green, right now. In his case, being categorized as a "Teen" or "Young Adult" author is a double-edged sword. It’s absolutely wonderful for teens themselves as Green never condescends, never holds back, never lies. On the other hand, it’s disheartening to think that some adults will never read his books because of that label.

John is unfathomably gifted in spinning tales of love and life that are throroughly genuine because they aren’t perfect. They are flawed, and momentary—built specifically of moments fleeting to those not personally experiencing them. Somehow, he is able to make universal truths feel achingly personal.

Every revelation his characters experience feels fresh. They are not constructed of platitudes and maxims. In fact, said characters often deride them directly and swiftly in the course of their development. Hazel and Augustus burn through their fair share in the Fault in Our Stars, as they are often chokingly surrounded by them in their lives as ‘Cancer kids.’ Together they work through their own feelings about being bereft of certain futures while struggling with their impact on everyone around them. Along the way they bond over an incomplete book which leads them halfway around the world in search of its reclusive author, and to the understanding of what it truly means to finish a book.

At the end of the day, what they learn and experience is just as relevant to those of us with less tenuous futures as it is to them. Of course, as John points out, that’s an important facet of all fiction. Live and love, in the face of death, and in the face of life.

5 Regretlessly pulled pins out of 5

Nutted by NEG

Thirteen Reasons Why (2007)

Author: Jay Asher | Page Count: 288

The premise of Thirteen Reasons Why is an interesting one. A girl, Hannah, who recently committed suicide left behind a series of cassette tapes in which she explains the various events that led to her suicide. I feel like Jay Asher had some big message he wanted to send here- there's no concrete reason why people kill themselves, small actions can have a huge effect on others- but he completely misses the art. Hannah is surprisingly unsympathetic, and seems more interested in dragging others down with her than anything else. Most of the things she tears apart others for are minor- voting her "Best Ass", touching her leg on a date- but some of her own actions are pretty sickening.

We experience the tapes via Gary Stu extraordinaire Clay Jensen, and it's him that takes this book from "not very good" to "nearly unreadable". He constantly interrupts Hannah's stories with the most inane interjections, like "wow this milkshake tastes really good" and "that class is really fun" and keeps the story from ever having any sort of flow. The book needed a likable character somewhere, I guess, but Clay's so devoid of flaws that it's irritating, and I can't like anyone who has to interject every 5 minutes to let me know that Hannah was pretty.

1 reason why I need to read better books out of 5