More thoughts on Guyaholic June 9, 2007

This is why I always include a summary in my reviews/recommendations/I-really-need-to-figure-out-what-to-call-them.

Guyaholic was just reviewed at Reading Rants!, and while I wholeheartedly agree with the recommendation, that’s not how I would summarize the book. But sometimes it takes reading another person’s review to get your own thoughts in order.

Anyway, I was wondering why the Reading Rants! review made me pause. It’s not that the review is inaccurate, because it isn’t. But I realized that because V’s story is told in the first person from her perspective, I didn’t see her as that girl. You know, the bad girl, the troublemaker, the slut. Oh, V was definitely that girl in Vegan Virgin Valentine, but enough time had passed since I read it that V started off with a pretty fresh slate when I began reading Guyaholic. And because the story is told from her perspective, we are able to see her confusion and poor decision making in a more sympathetic light. She’s not intentionally callous or cruel, and it would have been easy (ahem) to see her in that way if the story was told from another perspective. She’s also so matter-of-fact about her past that her mistakes are just that. Mistakes, not catastrophes or things to be ashamed of. In Carolyn Mackler’s hands, V is so much more than that girl.

For the record, this is my amazingly short Guyaholic summary: V (from Vegan Virgin Valentine) has never had a serious relationship in her life. Not with boys, not with her mother, until a solo road trip to Texas changes her perspective on love and relationships.

Also reviewed by Jackie.

If you’re not sick of this topic yet April 18, 2007

Although, how much more can I add to this (and this and this and this)?

But since I didn’t want to hijack Jackie’s review of Tantalize, I thought I should expand on the comments I left, since I had more to say and it was getting so long. Most of my comments were about about this sentence: “Just because I don’t love it, doesn’t mean I can’t recognize those who will.”

What I said there:

I may call my long comments on books “reviews” (and they are in the sense that I make a critical judgment about the book I’m discussing), but that’s mostly because I don’t know what else to call them. Book Ramblings? Book Commentary? Readers Advisory Notes? If I wanted to be known as a reviewer, I would be trying my best to get in as a reviewer for VOYA, at least, and I’d describe the blog as “reviewing Young Adult books” instead of “blather[ing] about Young Adult literature…” I don’t/can’t review in the way reputable print review sources demand, but I try to do my best to discuss books in ways that will help others decide whether or not they’d like to take a chance on Book X or Book Y. And if book news, gossip, and interviews (not that we’ve done any yet) will encourage people to pick up a particular book, what’s the problem with that?

More after the cut, for those who are interested.