cahn

So for Christmas (yeah, my family doesn't do delayed gratification; we had Christmas presents in September because we all had things we wanted) I got a kindle 3! It is much nicer than the previous kindle iterations; in particular I and my wrists are quite pleased that the page turn buttons are much easier to turn, and for some of my applications (reading while the baby's eating) it is extremely useful that the page turn buttons are almost silent. It is still basically impossible to do anything other than read sequentially through a book, which is lame.

It is registered to my sister's account so I get to read all the books my sister is dying for me to read. She has been into dystopias lately, hence the following:

Birthmarked (O'Brien) - Message (maybe -- there are a number of hints that the author is gearing up to display a rebuttal in the next book): Life is sacred and we shouldn't be killing babies or telling people who to marry, even if they want to marry siblings! Huh. I liked it better than the Hunger Games books, mostly because there is some indication that the author knows that the dangerously naive main character is, in fact, dangerously naive, and doesn't think this is necessarily a good thing. Or maybe I'm too optimistic? This is the first in a trilogy, and I am suspending judgement until the next book as to whether the above message is really what the author is trying to convey. It also suffers from a bit of first-book clunkiness, but not overly so.

Unwind (Shusterman) - Message: The alternative to being pro-choice is killing 16-year-old kids. Huh. I don't quite know what to say about this book. I found it compelling. I did really like it. The writing is quite a bit more transparent and flowing than Birthmarked, in the sense that I never felt like I had to move past the writing to get immersed in the story. That being said, the premise is pretty much incredibly ridiculous, not to mention anvilicious (there is actually a conversation late in the book as to when life begins. Really!), and almost offensive to me, which really hampered my enjoyment of the book. The most offensive to me is the idea of "storking" -- in this book it is legal to stick your kid on a random doorstep. For some reason, probably because I know what my friends had to go through to get licensed to adopt, this really rubbed me the wrong way. But the book also gets points for an extremely chilling scene near the end. So... I dunno... if you're pro-choice and don't mind being beaten about the head with straw men, you might like it. Otherwise, you still might as long as you ignore the anvilicious bits. Of these three I found it the most compelling and the most inspiring of strong feeling -- even though some of these feelings were negative, I think that shows that he got some things right (otherwise I wouldn't care).

The Adoration of Jenna Fox (Pearson) - Message: Stop giving people antibiotics for stupid reasons! I liked it, and of the three the message is the most muted/least anvilicious. Plus which I actually agree with the point about antibiotics. It also has a fair amount about the role of government, which it treats in a relatively nonjudgemental way. Of the three I found it the least problematic and with the best treatment of the issues it's interested in, although not as compelling a read as Unwind.