January books

[slemslempike]

Snuff - Terry Pratchett
The Book of Not - Tsitsi Dangarembga
The Year They Burned the Books - Nancy Garden
New Patches for Old - Christobel Mattingley
101 Ways to Meet Mr Right - Janet Quin-Harkin (Sweet Dreams)
Almost Perfect - Linda Joy Singleton (Sweet Dreams)
Must Be Magic - Marion Woodruff (Sweet Dreams)
The Truth About Me & Bobby V. - Janetta Johns (Sweet Dreams)
Playing Games - Eileen Hehl (Sweet Dreams)
Incredibly Alice - Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Fat Lollipop - Jean Ure
Dog Friday - Hilary McKay
Ten-Speed Summer - Deborah Kent (Sweet Dreams)
California Girl - Janet Quin-Harkin (Sweet Dreams)
Little Sister - Yvonne Greene (Sweet Dreams)
Down With Taffy Sinclair - Betsy Haynes

The first two I actually read in December but forgot about until I came to write this up. Snuff I quite liked, until I read a really good post somewhere about how rubbish it was, which I agreed with. Basically, I think I had been disappointed with Unseen Academicals, came into this with lower expectations, and was sated. The Book of Not is a sequel to Dangerous Conditions, with Tambu still at the boarding school. The Zimbabwean war is ongoing, and Tambu and the other African students are expected to side with the white soldiers against their own families. The utter grind of facing racist ideas, and having to be on guard all the time about their own and others' behaviour is really well conveyed. And no happy ending.

The Year They Burned the Books also doesn't have a happy ending, exactly. There is more hope - it seems like the parents and teachers will succeed in fighting back against the fundamentalist group that has shut down the health education class, and removed books that deal with sex, and especially homosexuality, from the school and public libraries. Janie, the main character, is a "maybe" at the beginning of the book, as her male friend (and sometime co-beard) moves through "probably" to having a boyfriend. The homophobic bullying doesn't stop, and there's no epiphany, but she has friendships that survive, and family support. I was very impressed that the book explicitly articulates (as opposed to talks explicitly) that the danger the homophobic students pose includes rape, for male and female gay students.

I decided to read New Patches for Old based on someone's comment (I can't remember who) that it talked about periods, and it does. She's on a beach, menarche is unexpected, but the boy she's with is just polite about it and then they all go swimming because they reckon she'll probably feel sticky and a bit yucky. Patricia and her family move from England to Australia with assisted passage, and she has a really hard time adjusting. She does make friends though, and the school teacher is less harsh than she seems.

I read all the Alice books up to about sophmore year (I vaguely remember Pamela being pregnant), before they got a bit samey and issuesy for me. But I was pleased to see Incredibly Alice on Kate and Fliss's shelves. This is Alice's final year at high school. Patrick is in Chicago at university, Alice doesn't get into her first choice college, one of her friends deliberately gets pregnant to force her boyfriends' parents to let them marriage, she gets a good part in a play and gets a job on a cruise ship for the summer.

Fat Lollipop was actually very distasteful on this reread. I really like the Peter High books, but this is all about Jo trying to help Lol lose weight, when Lol doesn't particularly want to. And Lol is a whiny, rude, spoilt and dull girl, and the message is that it wouldn't be nice to be horrible to her if she could help being fat, but she totally could, she just eats too much, so don't worry about bullying her over it.

Dolphin Luck (and its sequels) are really good, but I never remember about them in the same way I do the Exiles books, or the Casson family books. I love the havoc that the family next door (see, I can't even remember their surname) (actually, I can't remember the Exiles surname offhand) wreaks on the B&B business, but Robin is rather boring as a character.

Sweet Dreams! They are great, and perfect lengths for lunch and bus. They are all very similar, but one has girl just break up with her boyfriend while she's on a cycling tour, because he's dull and she hadn't realised, and another one features a chess game where people play the pieces.

Comments

[orionnebula.livejournal.com]

Taffy Sinclair! I haven't heard that name in years, but I had all of those books. And the Fabulous Five ones as well.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I hadn't heard of them before - I didn't like this Taffy book very much. It just seemed like bullying, to set up the club, and all just because she was pretty.

[orionnebula.livejournal.com]

You're not wrong. I don't remember that one specifically, but there was quite a bit of that. Though Taffy was also frequently a bitch, if I remember correctly, through the books. Of course, that was in my twelve year old, hating the beautiful, eyes.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Do you happen to know where the post about Snuff is? I was disappointed as well, in an "I'm enjoying this but I know how much better it could have been" sort of way - I thought it read like a good pastiche.