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Marc Acito, How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater: It’s the 1983-84 school year and Edward Zanni of Hoboken has to figure out how to get into, and then to pay for, Juilliard when his father insists that he’ll only pay for a business major. Fortunately, he’s got friends; unfortunately, their ideas tend towards the felonious. A bunch of comic setpieces strung together with bare connective tissue. The characters were all trying too hard to be charming, which makes them typical teens but no more fun for that. Bonus for varying sexualities among the teens, but points off for a 2004 novel in which Edward’s 1984 observations are way too precious (Madonna’s a flash in the pan, what does that Matthew Broderick fellow have that I don’t, etc.).
David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly: Speaking of the 80s, Hwang’s play was written the same year the Supreme Court upheld a law criminalizing homosexual sodomy. (It was performed a couple of years later.) It’s the story of a French diplomat who fell in love with a Chinese opera singer, who for twenty years he believed was a woman. (He never knew that the women’s roles were played by male singers in traditional Beijing opera.) It’s about Orientalism and sexual myths, cultural divides and gender divides, the lies we tell ourselves about other people in order to tell ourselves lies about ourselves, and it felt (sadly) fresh and true over twenty years later.
Sarah Rees Brennan, The Demon’s Lexicon: This is what I wanted the Rob Thurman books to be. Brennan has the fannish DNA, and also the book’s cover appears to feature young Tom Welling, so, bonus. Nick is the taciturn, snappish younger brother, protective of his physically weaker but smarter older brother Alan. They’re on the run from demons because their mother—who hates Rebel-With-a-Cause Nick—stole something very valuable from a powerful magician; magicians raise demons and use them to gain power. When a brother and sister seek the brothers’ help with a demon problem of their own, Alan’s compassion puts all of them in terrible danger, and many secrets are revealed. The mythology is cool—I’d read another book in the series just to learn what the heck is up with demons—and the big reveal, though not that hard to figure out, is terrifically satisfying. Highly recommended.
Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, & Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream: Anti-sprawl polemic, with plenty of pictures and statistics to make the case that building bigger houses further out is killing us—and this was well before the mortgage crisis! The authors tout New Urbanism instead, which relies on control-freak design to mix uses and make sure neighborhoods “feel” like neighborhoods. Good popular writing about designing the built environment, and persuasive pictures of suburban deadness versus urban/new urban liveliness; though the authors’ proposals are at least as manipulative as Coca-Cola ads, they’re manipulating you for a good purpose.
David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly: Speaking of the 80s, Hwang’s play was written the same year the Supreme Court upheld a law criminalizing homosexual sodomy. (It was performed a couple of years later.) It’s the story of a French diplomat who fell in love with a Chinese opera singer, who for twenty years he believed was a woman. (He never knew that the women’s roles were played by male singers in traditional Beijing opera.) It’s about Orientalism and sexual myths, cultural divides and gender divides, the lies we tell ourselves about other people in order to tell ourselves lies about ourselves, and it felt (sadly) fresh and true over twenty years later.
Sarah Rees Brennan, The Demon’s Lexicon: This is what I wanted the Rob Thurman books to be. Brennan has the fannish DNA, and also the book’s cover appears to feature young Tom Welling, so, bonus. Nick is the taciturn, snappish younger brother, protective of his physically weaker but smarter older brother Alan. They’re on the run from demons because their mother—who hates Rebel-With-a-Cause Nick—stole something very valuable from a powerful magician; magicians raise demons and use them to gain power. When a brother and sister seek the brothers’ help with a demon problem of their own, Alan’s compassion puts all of them in terrible danger, and many secrets are revealed. The mythology is cool—I’d read another book in the series just to learn what the heck is up with demons—and the big reveal, though not that hard to figure out, is terrifically satisfying. Highly recommended.
Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, & Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream: Anti-sprawl polemic, with plenty of pictures and statistics to make the case that building bigger houses further out is killing us—and this was well before the mortgage crisis! The authors tout New Urbanism instead, which relies on control-freak design to mix uses and make sure neighborhoods “feel” like neighborhoods. Good popular writing about designing the built environment, and persuasive pictures of suburban deadness versus urban/new urban liveliness; though the authors’ proposals are at least as manipulative as Coca-Cola ads, they’re manipulating you for a good purpose.